Old Guard, New Blood
by Maxwell's Daemon
Summary: More and more countries and some others are instituting their own programs involving mechanical bodies. An arms race is on, the search for the perfect soldier has begun and the Five Republics get a chance to even the score.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** There are some authors in this category whose work has served as an inspiration to my own. To these Muses I would just like to say, "I hate you." Mostly because my sudden desire to write this has sidelined another project.

**Dying Wish**

"I see, I see," the old man said, sitting up in his chair. The chair was a fine wooden piece, upholstered in soft leather. A tasteful antiquity, much like its owner. He leaned on his desk and spoke into the receiver, his voice a somber baritone, "And these prototypes are in the final stages of development?"

The voice of a younger man assured him it was so. "They should be combat-ready within a year, sir. Perhaps faster if you can persuade the good doctor to assist us. You received all the information we sent?"

"Yes, I have it all right in front of me." In front of him on the desk was a shallow collection of pictures, charts and papers, enough to fill the two manilla envelopes that sat open. Ignored, a newspaper sat near the desk's edge. "How did you acquire such detail, may I ask?" It was the sort of question that was not really a question.

"We learned of this through a reporter in the news media. He had a contact within the organization—"

"Had?" Though age had dulled the old man's reflexes considerably, his wit was sharper than ever.

"Uh... yes, sir. The contact was executed, but an unexpected twist of luck saved the reporter. He came to us for protection for himself and his family."

"So you can vouch for the accuracy of all of this? You must agree what you've sent... stretches credibility just a bit, not to mention being somewhat... "

"Disturbing?," the younger man volunteered. The older man frowned. Finishing his sentences for him implied a familiarity with which he was uncomfortable. At least from this glorified technician. "I can assure you, sir, it's all true and verifiable. The photos have not been doctored in any way. Furthermore, the funeral Dr. Nori attended is a testament to the importance of secrecy for such a project."

The older man pinned the receiver between his ear and shoulder so he could sift through some reports while the younger man continued,"If I may be so bold, sir?" The senior man grunted acknowledgement.

"Dr. Nori was one of the collaborators on some of the seminal papers in the emergent field of biological prosthetics while also being a gifted surgeon. My own team, and Dr. McAllister in particular, are optimistic that with his help we could quicken the pace. This could put our team years ahead of any competition in the field both from a theoretical as well as an applied perspective. Furthermore, with a monopoly we could sell off obsolete technology to other nations for a hefty price while still maintaining the upper hand, not to mention the prestige of—"

"That's presuming it works," the older man cut in. "Let's not get too optimistic, here. Until we see field-trials, this is all just so much wasted money."

"Of course, sir, but what I had meant to say was—"

"And Nori is a patriot. You think he'll be willing to set aside those loyalties so easily?" The elder man tossed the papers at which he had been looking on his desk, save a single photo. He admired the subject for a few seconds then flipped it over to read what was on the back.

"My apologies for being presumptuous, sir, but if you had to choose between your family or your country, which would you choose?"

He wasted no time in responding, "Point taken. What was this gentleman to Dr. Nori?"

"His father."

The man arched a gray eyebrow, "Oh?"

"Yes, sir. The deceased was officially married, but young Dr. Nori lived with his mother and rarely interacted with his father. Father and son were in the midst of sorting out their differences. They hadn't actually met face-to-face in almost twenty years." While the older man said nothing, he was quite impressed with the intelligence-gathering of his organization.

A light on the phone blinked. The man sat forward, ready to conclude the conversation. "Alright. Dr. Nori is here. We'll talk later."

"I hope the good doctor sees reason. Good luck, sir."

The older man hung up the phone and snorted derisively. What was it that made young people so impertinent these days, anyway? He decided it was a mix of popular culture combined with playing God in a laboratory setting and pressed a button on his intercom.

"Dr. Nori is here, sir," came a secretary's voice.

"Send him in."

The older man stood up and stretched. He straightened his tie and smoothed the folds of his suit as a matter of habit. This was not any sort of serious negotiation. He held all the aces in this game and was sure he knew which buttons to push, but even so people were capricious creatures. It would not do to alienate a potential ally through simple foolishness or a bad impression. Satisfied that he looked impeccable, he collected the documents scattered on his desk and put them back into the envelope to which each belonged in a neat and orderly fashion. All save one.

He walked around to the front of his desk ready to greet his visitor. In short order the double-doors opened and a pair of men in black suits escorted a third man in. Dr. Marcus Nori was wearing handcuffs and a black hood in addition to his black pants and white button-down shirt. The guards unlocked the handcuffs and removed the hood to reveal an irritated but otherwise unharmed man of relatively young age. His dark eyes focused on the well-dressed older man accusingly. His short black hair was ruffled and disheveled, a result of wearing the hood. A golden chain hung around his neck, peeking out from under the shirt. The outline of a crucifix was just barely discernible, attached to the chain, no doubt.

The older man motioned for the suits to leave and stepped forward with a warm smile and extended hand. "Please accept my apologies for the treatment you have received, Dr. Nori. You can call me Mr. Caesius, if you would."

As if by rote, Nori accepted the hand, noting the firm grip. A glimmer of recognition flashed in his eyes and he said, "You're—"

"Please, Mr. Caesius will do nicely. While I presume myself safe here my enemies are neither small in number, nor bound by such things as scruples or morals. Hence the precautions taken with your delivery here. If you have been mistreated in any way do not hesitate to voice your concern."

"No, no. Your men were thorough and efficient. Nothing more."

"Well, then. That's always good to hear. An organization is only as good as its people, don't you agree? Would you care for a drink?" Caesius asked as he crossed to a section of wall which held a fine selection of alcohol.

"No, thank you." The man had sounded shaken when he had arrived, but was quickly recovering.

"Though I love my country dearly, I have such a great love of French wines and brandies, armagnac in particular." he said, pouring himself a snifter of the stuff.

"Caesius? A word meaning blue-gray or so. The color of steel," Dr. Nori said as he looked around.

"An obscure reference, to be sure," the host said as he paused and looked back at his guest to offer an appreciative smile. Privately he was pleasantly surprised. So few men took the time to appreciate the rich culture of their homeland these days. Perhaps he really would like this Dr. Nori.

"I studied classical Greek and Latin for several years in my youth," Nori replied, standing confidently, feet apart, arms behind his back.

"Oh? Wonderful. Cultured and literate men are rare treasures in the modern day." He raised his glass slightly, as if in toast to such qualities, and savored the aroma and flavor of his chosen drink as his guest drank in the contents of the study.

Mr. Caesius himself was an aged Italian man. He had certainly been a barrel-chested man with thick, black hair in the summer of his youth, but age had turned him into a stocky man with steel gray hair. His suit was fashionable but not ostentatious, slate-gray with neither crease, wrinkle nor speck of dirt. He wore a black tie with a silver tie-tack and matching silver cufflinks. Several rings were fitted around strong fingers. Two were simple bands while one was set with a white pearl, a strange choice of stone. Conservative black shoes completed the outfit, but Nori could hardly identify their maker.

The middle of the room was dominated by a huge desk of indiscernible wood. A fine leather chair sat behind it and it was bare save some papers, two manilla envelopes, a newspaper, an old globe and a rather modern phone, looking out of place. Closer to Nori was a soft couch which matched the chair; both comfortable and elegant. Small end tables sat at either end of the couch. On the one nearest the door sat a worn, aged copy of _Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître_ which Nori recognized as having been an influential work of the late eighteenth century.

Two of the walls were covered by shelves of books, both modern volumes and aged classics. Each bookcase was close to four meters in height, stretching from the vaulted ceiling to the hardwood floor. The wall behind his guest contained the doors, flanked by reproductions of renaissance paintings. The wall closest to him held the bar, two busts — one of Machiavelli the other of Rousseau — and a terrarium. It was to the latter that Caesius walked, examining its contents as he spoke.

"Do you fancy predators, doctor? I find myself fascinated by reptiles, snakes in particular." The older man peered into the terrarium, then turned on a warming lamp above the tank. The lone occupant, a large snake which Dr. Nori could not identify, flicked its tongue, but did little else.

"Not really. I favor mammals, but I really favor people. That's how I got into medicine," he said, trying not to let the impatience he felt show.

Mr. Caesius set his brandy on the desk and removed his jacket to reveal a white silk dress shirt. The jacket went on the desk next to his drink. "Snakes are so interesting," he began as he unbuttoned his right sleeve and rolled it up to the elbow. "It can be hard to imagine that we have shared the Earth with them for so long..." he said, reaching into a small cage next to the terrarium, "...yet are so very different." From it he produced a white mouse, held by its tail, little legs working frantically to escape. "Literal cold-blooded killers. I love to watch them work," he said as he undid the latches on the top of the terrarium and dropped the mouse on top of a piece of tree which acted as terrain and aesthetic prop.

As he closed the tank and cage and dressed himself, Nori said, "You certainly went through a lot of trouble so that I could share a drink with you and watch your pet, Mr. Caesius." The older man smiled to himself as he buttoned his jacket and tucked his tie. Nori was getting impatient, but chose to broach the matter in a refined manner.

"Oh, there is much more to it than that, doctor, much more. Have a seat if you like, I shall take no offense. But I do like to watch this sport," he said, indicating the tank. The mouse had recovered and was exploring the terrain of its glass prison. Its little nose twitched as it sniffed this way and that.

"Thank you, but I'll stand," was the reply.

Caesius nodded, took a swig of brandy and began. "You have kept up to date with the current scandals in parliament?"

"Not really. I see them on the news, but I try not to pay attention. Politics isn't my thing. It's mostly he-said, she-said, anyway," he returned, trying to sound blasé; and succeeding.

"But even so, such actions, and from a senator for life, no less. That there is enough evidence to warrant an investigation into such matters is reason enough for the man to resign in shame, but all the Senate can do is deliberate while the more moderate Deputies point to his record of service. If it were not for certain elements of the media, the public might forget all about it. They may still..."

Nori shrugged and walked over to lean against the desk. From this vantage he had an excellent view of the actions in the terrarium. While the mouse seemed oblivious to the snake, the predator seemed to be regarding the prey thoughtfully. "I won't deny that," he said after some time for thought, "but that's what politics is all about. And the media loves to rouse the rabble. If you try a man in the court of public opinion his guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant."

"True enough, but the President should be above such things and still he sits, idle. It is matters like this which make the public view government as incapable and stagnant. If such a man as that can sit in the senate, what other vermin lurk in the hallowed halls of government?"

"Many, no doubt," Nori replied, watching a different sort of vermin. The mouse had stopped and appeared to be listening, occasionally sniffing the air. "But all men are fallible, no matter what it is they do with their lives."

"Just so, but men should recognize their own failings as the government should recognize its failure to perform its duty to the people."

"Such as when a sizable portion of the electorate favors secession?" Nori inquired, slyly. Caesius nodded his head slightly, in assent. He regarded his glass for a moment, then took another sip.

"How could that not cause more problems than it solves?" Nori inquired when it became clear that nothing more was forthcoming.

"For whom?" Caesius replied. His face remained passive, but his eyes smiled.

"The PRF are an implement of terror. The way to achieve such goals is through the legislature which has received its mandate from the people, not terrorists," Nori said, frowning.

"Desperate men employ desperate measures." The snake slid forward slightly, tongue testing the air. The mouse shifted uncomfortably.

Nori shook his head, "If they're that desperate then they have already failed. It's the twenty-first century. The first world should not have to resort to armed revolution. Besides, gridlock is good for government."

In the cage, the mouse became more bold. It made movements towards a bowl of water. Outside, Caesius laughed. "I shall concede that point. The more energy the government expends in politics, the less is available for misuse elsewhere." He tapped his glass thoughtfully as he contemplated the mouse's dilemma.

"But there exists the possibility that such measures have been tried already. Bureaucracy is a many-headed hydra... like my friend, here," he gestured with his glass at the snake, still frozen in place regarding the mouse, "but with more heads. Cut one off and another one strikes at you from behind."

"Conspiracy theories are the products of over-active imaginations coupled with idle hands," Nori said.

"The best lies contain the grain of truth," came the retort. "Despite the media's best efforts and the public outrage the senate still has a—"

"Those are only allegations, Mr. Caesius," Nori reminded him.

"Of course, doctor." Another sip of brandy gave him time to collect his thoughts. He was savoring this, every minute of it. In his youth he had been a fencer, and there were few who could offer him a challenge. His size made him appear to be deceptively slow. A bit old now to handle a foil or a rapier, the man known as Mr. Caesius fenced with words, but he still lived for the challenge.

"But it seems neither parliament nor the executive is concerned with the truth. Whether or not the public has passed final judgment, the government will not even bring the matter to trial. As is true of the matter of northern independence."

Neither man was paying attention to the mouse, anymore, who took this opportunity to inch closer to the water. In response, the snake moved forward a bit more. It moved in small bits, stopping whenever the mouse paused.

"To continue your parallel, sir, when it comes to northern independence, the prosecution resort to extortion, murder and destruction of property at a whim."

The mouse was at the edge of the water bowl, now. Cautiously, it sipped some water, then retreated.

"To say nothing of the defense."

"Pardon?"

"I meant that the prosecution is doing nothing the defence has not done first."

Nori forgot himself for a minute and regarded his host as if he were some backwater bumpkin insisting on the existence of little green men from Mars. "You really believe that?" he asked with a hint of scorn in his voice.

Caesius only shrugged, failing to take offense. "If they did it would be near impossible to confirm. Likewise, it would be near impossible to see a senator tried, convicted and penalized when the judiciary has more to lose by such action than they have to gain by _in_action."

The mouse, emboldened by its prior taste of water, and sensing no repercussions, moved closer and begin to drink, its pink tongue making little ripples in the water. The snake reared itself up, poised to strike.

"You're saying there's a cover-up," he said, indignantly. "That the government has _carte blanche_ to forward its agenda in any way it cares to despite what the people do or say in protest?" He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. "That couldn't happen in this day and age. Even if there were a huge conspiracy through multiple levels of government, too many people would find out. Too many would have attacks of conscience. There would be huge public outcry because it would be impossible to keep such a thing secret on such a massive scale."

Caesius nodded sagely, saying, "There is a new grassroots political movement that formed in the north recently. Perhaps you have heard of them?"

Nori chuckled and shook his head. "No offense, but I think you're grasping at straws."

The older man set his drink on the desk. "There was a time when I was young and idealistic like you. Willing to believe in the inherent goodness of man."

The mouse tensed. It sensed danger. The younger man tilted his head to eye his host. "Where's the proof?"

Mr. Caesius took the newspaper from off his desk. It had been turned to an inner page and folded, an article circled in Sharpie. He handed it to his guest. Unnoticed by either man, the snake struck. In an eyeblink it had buried its fangs in the mouse who scrambled frantically to get away.

A sceptical look still on his face, Nori unfolded his arms enough to receive the newspaper. He scanned the contents, and as he did his expression changed, hardened. He unfolded his arms and stood up straight. His mouth a tight line, and his eyes burning with hatred he asked, "What does this have to do with anything?"

Silent, Caesius handed a stack of paper to a grieving son. The papers were several blank sheets of typed text with handwritten notes in the margin.

The snake drew in its prey, slowly, methodically. The mouse struggled but it was pinned and could not hope to prevail against the larger creature. There was no emotion in the snake's cold eyes, neither compassion nor joy. It merely did what it had to do to survive.

Nori read through the paper, unbelieving, at first. He read the margin notes and flipped to the second page. Caesius regarded his brandy thoughtfully, then finished the last of it. He really did like armagnac, but that last draught had been a bit bitter for his liking.

Dr. Nori kept reading. By the time he had gotten to the third page, his pain was palpable. Caesius casually walked to the bar, grabbed a clean rocks glass and poured a double scotch. He heard a whispered, "My God!" behind him and the turn of a page. Footsteps and the creak of the leather couch. He set the drink down and began to pack up the bar.

"How can— How can I know this is true?" came the question behind him. The voice was a combination of anger and sorrow, struggling to maintain composure.

Caesius stopped what he was doing and spoke without turning, "The reporter who wrote it requested asylum within the Five Republics saying that he had been targeted for execution by someone in the government. When the reason became clear, he and his family were relocated, and quickly I might add. You can meet him if you like."

His work done, he took the drink and crossed over to Nori. The younger man was seated on the couch, his face flushed. Caesius offered the drink. Nori took it without protest.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice quiet and resigned.

The older man walked to his desk. In the terrarium, the snake had finished devouring the mouse. It slid back to its spot and lied down, content to digest. "I'm not a killer or a terrorist," came Nori's voice. It sounded like he was choking back tears.

Caesius picked up both manilla envelopes and held one in each hand. He turned to look at his guest. The papers given to him lay on his lap, the scotch in his hand. "The newspaper and copyedit you can keep, or leave as you wish. Our organization has plenty enough killers and mercenaries. What we need from you is your skills as a doctor, researcher and surgeon. If you are willing to help us, help your fellow countrymen, I will give you these," he indicated the envelopes he held, "and arrange to have your family moved. Too much deviation in your normal routine could put them in danger."

"And they'll be hostages against my cooperation."

"Not at all, doctor. They can be moved wherever you wish and be under as light or as heavy a guard as you want. Their safety is important."

Nori nodded. He understood the implications even as he admitted the necessity. He regarded the glass in his hand for a few seconds, then kicked back the drink. Unused to such potent liquor, he stifled a cough. "What's in those?" he asked when he could speak again.

"This one," the right hand came up, "details the project mentioned in that copyedit you read. This one," the left, "details the project on which you would be working. Really advanced stuff. What was the word? Bleeding-edge I think is how Dr. McAllister described it." There was a reaction to the name. If there had been any doubt before, the mention of such a prestigious colleague had put that to rest. "Of course, these are available on a need-to-know basis. As it stands now, you can walk out that door and go home and continue to live your life as you see fit."

But the good doctor had closed his eyes and was already shaking his head. "No, sir." He looked directly at his host, firm in his conviction. "I love my country, but I would kill to protect my family. Or avenge them."

"Amen," came the response as he handed the envelopes to the PRF's newest recruit. "Family?" The old man screwed up his face in incomprehension. "Tell me, doctor, what was Captain Raballo to you?"

The man had stood up and tucked the envelopes under his left arm. "He was my father, sir. Nori is the name of my mother's family."

"Oh!" said the older man. He took some time to digest that before saying, "Then please accept my condolences on the passing of your father. He was a friend of mine from my time in the military." Nori nodded but said nothing.

"If you will excuse me, then, I need to make arrangements for your family." Caesius pressed a button on his phone. Seconds later the doors opened and the men in suits stood at the ready. "These men will escort you out. I will have you put in contact with your family as time permits. I am truly sorry we had to meet under such circumstances."

Nori had turned to walk out, but paused halfway, swallowed hard and said, "Yeah. Me, too."

Alone, the older man waited a few minutes, thoughts running through his head, then picked up the phone and dialed. After he heard an answer he said, "It is done. Prepare the prototypes for field-testing."


	2. King

**Author's Note:**This chapter and the three following all tell a similar story in different ways. Some may find this redundant.

**All the King's Horses**

His mother had always been somewhat aloof. He could never remember her being any other way. That was just the way things were. Maybe that's just the way things had been for her when she had been younger. His stepfather, 'new dad,' tried to be warm when he was around, but such an occasion was rare. His stepsister, on the other hand, was like a beacon of light in a bland existence. She was six years his junior, and cute as a button. She smiled often and at length, only occasionally trying on a different expression, most often for effect. She pouted cutely when she did not get her way, scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue when big brother was being self-important, but mostly giggled with the infectious, girly joy of a child of six years.

He had enjoyed being a big brother all those years ago. He didn't mind at all that there had been no blood relation between them, or that they looked absolutely nothing alike. She had a nordic face and build, with curly blond hair, rosy cheeks and sky blue eyes, like her mother. He had the dusky complexion of a boy from Milan, with the dark hair and eyes he shared with his parents.

Those few years had been the best of his childhood. When he had been sent away to boarding school — a few years later than was appropriate — he found that it was most often his sister to whom he wrote letters and made phone calls. He still was courteous to both parents, who were consistent in their praise of him and his performance at school. They told him how proud they were to have such a fine and upstanding young man for a son. But when he talked with his sister he could be a kid again.

When he had finished his schooling and entered military service letters and phone calls never stopped. In the first few days of basic training, another recruit had remarked that he, too, wished he had a kid sister to whom he was not really related, implying a relationship that would be incestuous with a 'real' sister. A few days later, the new recruit showed obvious pain when performing hard, physical exertion, but insisted that there was nothing wrong with him. He also learned to be more judicious when it came to incest jokes. Barracks justice was harsh, but fair.

All that had come to an end one day in the fall when the cute blonde girl, who had since become a teen, was gunned down with her parents outside a popular restaurant in Rome. The real target had been a senator from the northern part of Italy whose lack of condemnation for the PRF was as notorious as his tough stance on organized crime. Reportedly, a mob boss who had recently been cleared of all charges had vowed and then exacted revenge. Mama, Papa and the pretty blonde girl were just innocents caught in the crossfire. 'Collateral damage' was the term. The irony was that her big brother was just a half mile away. The horror was in how it had played out. They had been talking on the phone, brother and sister, without a care in the world. The big lieutenant was on leave talking into his cell phone with his baby sister when he heard the gunshots and screams. The scene played out in his head as he desperately hoped for a response. The connection was still active; the phone was still working, but the only sounds its owner made were moans of pain. Not knowing what else to do, he ran, calling for an ambulance along the way.

Four minutes of flat-out running can cover a lot of ground, and a running man can squeeze through places too tight for vehicles. When big brother arrived he surveyed the situation. The senator had been killed by a single shot to the head from a large-caliber rifle. Both parents had died shortly thereafter, one shot through the neck, the other from a burst to the neck. His sister was still alive, her viscera shredded by small-caliber weapons fire. The worst part was looking into her eyes. They pleaded with him for an end to the pain, but none was forthcoming. A coroner's van had arrived on the scene, but the ambulance had been delayed somehow. Useless, all he could do was hold her and scream for a doctor or medic or anyone. Big brother couldn't save you, sweetie.

She lingered for almost nineteen minutes.

**------------------------------------------------**

"King. I'm going shopping," he said into the headset.

"Copy that," came a woman's voice.

"Acknowledged," came a man's. "And could you pick up some creamer while you're there?"

King sighed to himself. What an ass. The phrase 'going shopping,' was his code phrase for 'in position.' Each team member had their own set of key words and phrases to avoid redundancy and further confound any opponent who was able to tap their communications. King was the only one who ever 'went shopping,' but Joker liked to tease him, nonetheless. He wished that guy had been saddled with something even more inane. Either that or a good, old-fashioned boot-to-the-head. Most people could use one. Joker could use several.

The fourth member of the team failed to acknowledge. She couldn't. She hadn't heard his report and she didn't have any way to communicate with her team, other than by playing charades in front of a camera. Trouble is, she didn't even know where the camera was in her room. She just stood there, waiting to play her role. He had to admit, she did look the part.

He was sitting in a small dark room near the top of an expensive hotel in Rome. Hunched over his laptops he could monitor just about any form of communication in the building that was not face-to-face. He could also generate white noise, selectively alter camera feeds and generate or suppress alarms. He could have the fire department, police and paramedics here in minutes or lock the entire place tighter than a Southern Baptist's... well, maybe that wasn't such a good analogy. He'd known more than a few Baptists. The point was that he owned this place now. The subtle flow of battlefield (and civilian) information was under his control. Information warfare was his duty, his job, his reason for living. Actually, he had another reason for living, but 'avenging the cutest kid sister who ever was' didn't look as good on the resumé.

Startled by a presence next to him he turned, hand on his Colt. Queen had slipped up and crouched next to him, stealthy as a cat. He frowned at her. She smiled sweetly. King was a lanky Italian man, dressed in black combat gear which included his headset, sidearm and a few other odds and ends. Fingerless gloves allowed him to operate the communications gear more effectively. Typing on a laptop keyboard in gloves sucked. Maybe that's why Queen didn't bother with shoes. The thought made him glance down at her bare feet and painted nails. She looked down, then up and smiled again.

She was a lithe creature, all muscle and supple grace. Her long red tresses had been done up in two little buns and pinned to keep stray hair out of the way. He was certain she wasn't a natural redhead, but had never broached the subject. She seemed to be too dark-skinned for a redhead, anyway. But, then again... what about them was really natural anymore, anyway?

"Joker. It's Miller time!" That meant their point man was in position. Joker didn't really _do_ anything that he knew of, besides crack dumb jokes and kill people. He had some medical training, so technically he was the team's medic, but they healed so damn fast that team members really only had two states: alive and not alive. Despite this King had taken to calling him the point man. It had so far proven to be an apt description.

"Copy," King said. A second later, Queen echoed the sentiment.

He turned to motion to her, but she wasn't there. At least she was good at her job. Now it was time for him to do his. Their target had several thugs with him, all of whom kept in radio contact. The key here was that technology had progressed since the days of old dummy radios that just broadcast transmissions in a sphere. Each thug used a cell phone as his primary communication device with what was essentially a hands-free headset. The phones were pretty much stock so they each had their own transponder code and they periodically updated the cellular network as to the status of the phone and reception. That meant that with the several transceivers he'd seeded throughout the building earlier in the day, he could use simple triangulation to pinpoint any one thug's position. Any one thug's _phone_ he corrected himself. If a goon had the presence of mind to pull the battery from his phone or just ditch it somewhere, he would become an unknown quantity again. Most people weren't that smart, even after having seen _The Matrix_ half a dozen times.

Of course, the same trick could be used to pinpoint King himself, but he just had to be better than the competition. That was fine by him. He was. He glanced at the hidden camera monitoring the room where their fourth member stood, in disguise. Their target had entered. The bait was taken. "Awaiting confirmation from all team members," he said into the headset. What sounded like a simple 'wait and see' was actually King's keyphrase for 'start the mission.' He had to admit... whomever had put this team together was one hell of a strategist.

One of King's more devious tricks was selective denial of enemy communications. It was the sort of thing he had thought about often enough when he was an officer in the military, but now he'd get the chance to perfect it. He hit a key on one of the laptops. The thugs had been in intermittent contact off and on for a while, now. Guard duty was boring and they engaged in harmless banter to wile away the time. _It served a second purpose_, King thought to himself. If one of them failed to respond after a sufficient amount of time the others knew there was a problem. Further, overloading the entire usable RF spectrum with white noise would cause a communications blackout but would also alert the enemy that something was afoot. King's laptop was running a program designed to emit white noise at certain times. It was keyed to the transmit signal sent by one of the enemies. As soon as that guy tried to talk, everyone else heard static, but he could hear them fine. The unsuspecting sort could put it down to malfunctioning equipment. King knew better.

Right now, the guard on the elevator on the target's floor was having some equipment problem. King teased them by holding down the space bar for a bit. That suspended the jamming so partial transmissions came through from the elevator guard. He let go after a partial broadcast got through. If the timing was off he could interfere with Queen and that could be problematic. She was running silent, now, her transponder set to receive, only. He didn't know where she was, but the elevator on that side was moving up from a few floors below.

Precious seconds later came her acknowledgement of goal achieved, "My life for Aiur."

Joker chimed in, "An African or European swallow?" King thought he knew that line from a movie, not that it mattered. That did, however, mean that he was starting his diversionary tactic. In the distance came the sound of automatic weapons fire. He looked at the screen showing the hotel room. Ace was already gone, the corpse of their target sprawled on the bed in a rather ugly death. Good. A foul end to a foul man. Even so, he had to wait until his team was reassembled before pulling out.

Joker's transponder indicated he was climbing the western staircase. Queen's was off and Ace didn't have one. The elevator on the east side of the building, the one guarded by the thug Queen had dispatched, was moving down. That meant Ace was almost home. Queen should already be upstairs somewhere. That left everyone waiting on Joker. He was taking longer than anticipated. King checked the position of the west elevator, checked Joker's position, then squelched an alarm and killed outgoing phone calls from the front desk. He spoke into his headset, "Dairy aisle," then hit the button on his laptop that blacked out communications and waited. The west elevator started its descent to the parking garage. Joker hadn't resumed climbing yet, though. He shut down a laptop, pulled some cables and started cleaning up.

Ace and Queen came through the door. Ace was a little thing, a slender Japanese girl with the trademark dark hair and eyes. She was carrying the blade she'd used to dispatch their target and wearing nothing but a little blood. She blew him a kiss, retrieved her belongings and slipped into something more appropriate.

"Where is he?" Queen asked, referring to their teammate.

King glanced at a screen. "Four floors down. Go play welcoming committee," then to Ace, "Carry this for me."

Tying back her hair, she smiled mischieviously. "I'd love to handle your package."

The laptop indicated Joker was on their floor. Protocols dictated that he was not to break down the last of his equipment until he had visual confirmation, though. He waited, but not for long. The other door opened, and Joker walked in, looking full of himself.

"Yeah, baby! Nothing like a good firefight to get the blood pumping, don't you think?" Joker also had dark hair and eyes, but he was originally from Syria. You wouldn't know it to listen to him. He spoke fluent Italian without a hint of foreign accent. The ear to ear grin he wore was the sort that could be found anywhere in the world, though. He was taller and stockier than King, but was outfitted the same way, except for an empty MP5 slung over his shoulder. The clothes on his chest showed some wear and tear, but there was no blood. And he certainly sounded fine.

"Carry that," King indicated another bundle of equipment.

"What? After running up all those stairs you want me to carry your junk? And you're not even ready to go, yet! It's not like you had anything better to do, sitting up here in the dark playing World of Warcraft or whatever."

Queen snickered. King frowned. The Joker laughed. He picked up the bundle of stuff and headed for the door. King worked quickly, wrapping cords and stowing electronics. When he was done, Queen grabbed the last of his equipment and he picked up his rifle. It was time to go. King mentally patted himself on the back. Mission accomplished. Flawless execution. Even that thought made him feel no better, though.

**Next:** _Silent Death_


	3. Queen

**Queen of Hearts**

Tara loved a lot of things. She loved her homeland, the place she was born, the land from which she took her name. She loved sweet things and girly romances and being under warm covers when it was cold out. She positively adored all things feline, petting and playing with cats and chasing them around. But most of all, she loved the nighttime. At night she could sneak around, unseen and unheard. At night she was a ghost and no one could see or hear her.

One thing she didn't much love about Ireland, though, were the people. Not that there was anything wrong with them as people go, but she was too different, too unloved. She was a Catholic. That was a big no-no in Ireland. Actually, mommy always said that _real_ Irish were Catholics and that many of their neighbors weren't really Irish. Even though they lived in Ireland. Living there hadn't been the initial plan, but things had gone southward for their family and their plans to move had been curtailed. The other problem was race. She was black.

That's probably not the best way to put it, but that's what the children her age called her. Actually, they called her many more unsavory things than that, but that's what it was about. There were several Catholic families where she grew up, but they could mostly trace their roots to Ireland. Tara's grandfather was from Egypt and Tara's mother was several shades darker than what would be expected in a place like Ireland. Hence the teasing.

There were other things, too. Things she'd rather not think about. Thinking about the past often made her unhappy. Like the time daddy had slipped at work and gotten hurt. He had been at home for a week without pay and it looked to Tara like he had fallen on his head a few times and not just once. But no one talked about it much and daddy went back to work the following week. There were the games the other children played with her. The rules never seemed to favor her and it always seemed that their was some rule about the darkest girl getting beat on the most. There had been a game with a rule about anyone with red hair getting a smack if they broke any other rule (for some reason she always remembered it as The Stepchild Game), but one of the boys in town had a red-haired brother and they only ever played that game once.

So Tara didn't really get along with the kids her age. She was always the weakest and she got winded easily when running. That's why she loved the darkness. There were only two rules when it was dark out. Don't make a sound and don't let anyone see you. Tara was excellent at that game and she didn't have to worry about running fast or being strong. No one could touch her at night.

Early on in life, though, she started going to the doctor more and more often. The kids at school said it was because she was a freak, but mommy said it was because she might not be living up to her full capacity and mom wanted Tara to be all she could be. Maybe that's because mommy was having trouble having more children. Tara also didn't like to think about that much. Most of the fights between her parents were centered on that issue and mommy's problems with her uterus, whatever that was.

Things changed when Tara was ten, though. The family moved to Italy so Tara could go to the doctor there. She still wasn't clear on why she needed to see the doctor so much, or what potential she was lacking, but they said she needed an operation. It was to fix her anemia. It was exciting because she was going to be the first to try out a new treatment. That thought made her feel better, but as she was drifting off to sleep — so the doctors could try out their new treatment — she was certain she saw mommy cry.

The next few years went along rather smoothly. The treatment worked much better than expected, but there was more to go. Often, when Tara woke up in a hospital bed, she felt sore all over and had to call for a nurse. The nurse would come in and do something to the bottle next to her bed and she would fall asleep again. When she was not in the hospital, Tara assimilated into Italian culture. None of the kids at her new school made fun of her the way the old kids did. They made fun of her, to be sure, but it was for things she deserved instead of the way she looked or for being Catholic. They even thought her hair was the coolest thing ever.

At eighteen years, she had finally hit the age of majority. Tara was an adult and the first thing she wanted to do as an adult was look at her medical records. It took some hand-wringing, some calls to her representatives in parliament and a lot of time, but shortly before her twentieth birthday she learned the truth. Tara was some sort of Frankenstein's monster. She'd had anemia when she was young and the pioneering new treatment was nothing short of replacement of large amounts of bone marrow and all her blood. The doctors had stopped the heart of a ten year old girl as she lay on an operating table, sucked all the blood out of her and replaced it. Tara had died ten years ago and no one had told her.

Truth be told, it was a sweet deal. The doctors had projected that the disease wouldn't kill her, just leave her weak as a kitten for her adult life. Her family had been well compensated for their daughter's life, including the moving expenses and some work done on the mother's uterus. Tara was older. She knew what a uterus was and why it had pained her mother so much that she could never have more children. And the doctors had been able to put her daughter back together afterwards so everyone could live happily ever after.

At least until the day Mr. Gray came. Mr. Gray explained how he wanted her to work for him against the corruption in Italy's government. He wanted Tara to be a soldier. But she didn't want to be a soldier. She wanted to be an artist (her style was cartoony, but cute) and she wanted to lounge around the house all day with her cats. Surely there was someone better suited than a lazy red-haired girl who had been dead for ten years!

Mr. Gray assured her that the medical procedure she'd undergone was the entire reason he'd asked her. They would turn her into a bionic woman using the very latest in medical technology. She already had fake blood and bones, so the worst part was over. The doctors would just replace some other things and she could fight evil, only without a TV show. Tara still hadn't been sure. Then Mr. Gray played the guilt card. If she didn't accept, some other little girl or boy would need to be taken apart and put back together. Someone else would die on the doctor's operating table the way she had, and it would be her fault. The logic was circular at best, but she had never been good with logic but she was very familiar with guilt. She _was_ Catholic, after all. Plus, it's not like she was doing much with her life anyway. Not anything she couldn't do while being a soldier, right?

Tara had been the first of the newest breed of soldier. The ideal had little appeal to her, but she had been swayed by guilt and hope. Guilt about not letting someone else die in her place and hope that her new body was a wonder of biotechnology designed to field-test the most cutting-edge artificial body parts and medical treatments. She'd already made medical history once, but that didn't need to be the last of it. Even so, it took her some time to get used to how everything worked. She had always liked to dance and run. The latter took some getting used to. The former caused her to fall over a lot.

But progress had been made, and she and her colleagues were assembled and trained. The doctors were able to refine their training program based on what they learned from Tara. The ones who came after were trained faster than she was, but that was fine. She had plenty of time just to lie around and cuddle her cats while they were recovering.

She had always been an optimist and she liked to think that things had gone well for her, despite humble beginnings. Once she had accepted Mr. Gray's proposal he had asked if there was anything she had wanted done, cosmetically, since they were going to replace most of her original equipment. She immediately responded that she wanted a slimmer ass and flatter tummy. All the doctors and even Mr. Gray had gotten a chuckle out of that. She sure did get the flat tummy. Even after all the teasing from her childhood in Ireland though, she kept her skin tone and hair color the same as they had been (she got her hair reddened just the teensiest bit). That was part of who she was and she didn't want it to change.

**------------------------------------------------**

Her headset crackled, "King. I'm going shopping."

"Copy that," she said immediately.

"Acknowledged," said Joker. "And could you pick up some creamer while you're there?" he quipped.

She suppressed a giggle. What a ham. Despite all the googoo eyes the big Syrian made at her she was pretty sure he wasn't serious about anything. Of course, there was also the fact that they had some really silly things to say over the radios. Sometimes it was allowable to use normal words when talking mission stuff, but there was a whole complex lingo of codewords and whatnot they had to memorize. King insisted it was to 'obfuscate their communications,' though he hadn't put the list together. Obviously. He was too dull to come up with some of the funny stuff they had to say. Still he was a good-looking guy (not that it was his natural body or anything, she needed to constantly remind herself) and nice enough, if a bit determined. She only knew a little bit about his past, but he was here for vengeance. Something about the government killing his little sister or something. Poor guy. She wished she'd had a big brother like him to beat up bullies or a cute little sister. Not that she needed a big brother now, but a little sister would be great.

King on her mind, she silently finished her patrol and headed back to catch their team-leader unawares. The carpet inside the hotel was nice on her feet after having walked around on the roof for a bit. Her hair was done up in a style called 'ox horns' that at least looked somewhat cute while also being functional. She wore a neat black commando suit with a pistol and a flashlight and her radio and knives... lots of knives, but the one thing she didn't care for was shoes. Absolutely hated them. Her cats never needed to wear shoes, why should she?

King had given her a problem about it early on. "Ever try to sneak up on someone in combat boots?" she had asked. He had been willing to drop it, but she had been willing to compromise by wearing what amounted to thick black socks that left her toes and heels exposed. They were kinda like King's gloves, but for her feet. So now she glided silently across the floor on toes with nails painted black to match her fingers. Flat black was the only color allowed on a mission. She'd repaint them when she got home. Something colorful, like blue or green, maybe.

As expected, King was huddled in the dark, watching all sorts of stuff on three laptops in front of him. One had a live webcam view of Ace, waiting patiently for the target. She fidgeted a bit, looking every bit as nervous as she was supposed to be. She wasn't. That girl was crazy. Cold. Like she hadn't ever figured out how to really smile or hug someone. The creepy part was how she carried herself around the boys. Quite often something one of them said would prompt some bit of playful sexual innuendo from her. But she was still so... cold. What was the point of...

Meh. She'd never understand that girl, anyway. She crouched next to King, practically sitting right next to him. He reached for his gun, before he looked to see who it was. He frowned. She smiled sweetly. _Don't be such a butthead_, she thought. _If anyone had come close they'd be sucking air through a hole in their neck._ Their eyes met. His were dispassionate, his mind probably on the mission. For some reason, he glanced down, then looked back at her face. Her eyes followed his, down to her toes. She thought they were cute, just like the rest of her. Maybe he was still pissy about that. She smiled again, anyway.

The headset crackled to life. She stood up. Time to move. "Joker. It's Miller time!" King acknowledged. So did she. Sometimes you just had to laugh. Creeping around in the dark to go kill people was not that time. But she laughed inside, just the same. It's Miller time! Seriously!

Silent cat feet carried her down several flights of stairs. There were two stairwells in this building, one on the west side and another on the east. The target's room was closest to the east side, so it would be Queen's job to eliminate the guard on the elevator there. This was the part of her job she liked the least, but she was able to kill quickly, quietly and without compunction. What did that say about her as a person?

Ideally the elevator guard was her only target. If things went smoothly, his was the only life she would have to snuff out tonight. Ace would handle the primary target, Joker would provide a distraction and King would coordinate. Neither of the last two needed to kill anyone. If it was necessary she was sure neither would hesitate, but killing wasn't a mission objective for either of them. _How interesting_, she thought to herself as she stepped into the elevator and pushed some buttons, _that the girls both have to kill while the boys don't this time out_. Though Joker's real job was to get shot at. She wasn't sure which she'd rather have.

There wasn't a heavy enemy presence here tonight, so she had ditched her SMG and was armed only with knives and her two SIGs. She thought that the pistols were about as cute as she was likely to get as far as guns were concerned. What she would love to have was one of those itty-bitty tiny guns which looked so adorable. But those only chambered one shot and she could probably catch the bullet if someone shot one at her. Joker was certain those things had really slow muzzle velocity, and muzzle velocity made the bullet go. Making the bullet go made the target dead. Or at least made the target grab his wound in pain. Either one generally worked out when it came to neutralizing a target.

But now the game was afoot, so to speak. Time was of the essence. The biggest problem was the lack of coordination. They had no way at all to communicate with Ace. She had been sent in alone with nothing but a school uniform and an empty purse. The only way they could tell what was going on in her room was the tiny camera that sent a live feed via the magic of radio waves to King. If something came up, he could tell them and try and anticipate what Ace would do. That was fairly easy because they had planned against several problems that could occur. Even so, it was tricky business.

While she thought, Tara reached up to the access hatch that was used for emergencies. She pulled it open and climbed up on top of the elevator car, itself. The shaft was dark, but she could make out the ladder on the side, just as the schematics had described. She dropped back down and double-checked that all her gear was securely strapped and buckled while she waited for the car to stop one floor up from her mark. It did. Now she had to wait for the go ahead from King.

A song found its way into her head as she waited. She started to hum along to the tune. She was near the refrain when the announcement came over the radio, "Awaiting confirmation from all team members."

Here came the hard part. She hit the button to open the doors, punched the button to go down one floor and hopped out of the elevator. From there she opened the door to the nearest room and sprinted through to the balcony. She threw that door open and stepped out. She was a dizzying height above the ground, maybe seventy meters or more. Without hesitation she hopped over the railing and dropped to the edge. Kicking her legs out to swing in, she dropped the rest of the way, landing with all the grace of a sack of rocks on the balcony below.

The door on this balcony was unlocked and she crossed the room as fast as she could without making any noise. She stopped by the door to the hall and held her breath for a second or two to focus on the sounds outside. She could hear the man out in the hallway, her mark. He smelled of cheap Italian cologne and gun oil. His breathing was heavy; he probably smoked or had cardio issues. He was talking into his radio, "What the hell is wrong with you people, I can hear you just fine!"

**_DING!_** The elevator doors opened.

She heard footsteps. He had turned around. A gun was drawn. Slowly, quietly she opened the door. It slid open without protest and she emerged into the hallway, blade at the ready. The hallway was clear save for the goon with his gun trained on the hole in the ceiling of the elevator car. Closer and closer she snuck, with no sound to betray her presence to the man who was now just within arm's reach.

Sometimes, things are so beautiful, so perfect you just have to laugh. But not when you're close enough to kiss a man you're supposed to kill. Her hand went to the gun, her blade into the back of his head. His finger tightened on the trigger and his body jerked in death. Warm blood flowed over the blade and down his back. Her knife came out and wiped twice on the front of his shirt. He crumpled to the floor and she pulled him outside of the elevator to stink up the hallway and disgust passersby.

She pressed a button on her radio-doodad and said, "My life for Aiur," then pressed the button on the dead man's headset so it would appear as if he was still trying to talk to his pals. She looked at the pistol in her hand. It was some gun or another. Tara wasn't a gun nut... she didn't know these things. She put it back in its holster. When the corpse was later discovered they'd have a hard time figuring out why his gun was still in its holster with the safety on.

She stepped in and pressed the Hold button. All she had to do now was wait for her teammate. Joker's voice came out of the small speaker in her ear, saying, "An African or European swallow?" She smiled. Joker sure did get the zaniest things to say. That one was from a silly movie. She liked silly movies, especially that one. It was an English movie and it reminded her of home. Whomever came up with these catchphrases and whatnot must've been a character. When she had asked what Aiur was, Joker had told her it was from a video game. Evidently she had a bunch of lines from that game. She had played with it at one point, just to see what all that was supposed to mean, but it still hadn't made much sense to her.

The sound of gunfire drifted up from floors below. Ace had better appear soon. Tara felt exposed standing in a brightly lit hallway. She heard shouts in the distance and footfalls. Someone was running this way. Small, light and fast. That was her girl. She poked the Hold button on the elevator once more and raced for the stairs. More footfalls. The target's guards were in pursuit. That's fine. Ace could handle herself.

At the stairwell she cautiously opened the door and peered around. Gunfire sounded behind her. She stepped in and quickly ascended. Empty stairwell, again. No surprise. No one ever takes the stairs anyway, lazy asses.

She was almost at the top when she heard, "Dairy aisle," come over her radio. That was the communications blackout signal. She paused for a second or two to catch her breath and let her heartrate return to normal, then went back to the elevator. She jammed her slender fingers between the doors, pried them open and looked down. The little Japanese girl was three or four meters below climbing the ladder, knife in her mouth like a pirate. Except she hadn't wiped the blade off. Perhaps because she didn't really have anywhere to wipe it except on her. She was climbing in the nude, the only thing covering her was a splash of blood at the nape of her neck. Ewww.

"Ewww. Do you know where that's been?" she asked, squatting, looking down at her teammate and gesturing at the knife. Ace tried to focus her eyeballs on the object in her mouth and looked silly doing it. She held onto a rung with one hand, pulled the knife with the other, and regarded her weapon for a minute.

"Sure do," she said, sticking it back in her mouth and resuming the climb.

Tara tried so hard to like the girl, but she was still so cold and sometimes creepy. This was a creepy time. She said nothing, just gave the other woman a hand off the ladder and onto the floor once she reached the top. Maybe part of it was culture clash. Part of it was certainly the way Ace looked. She could dress to look sophisticated and mature, if petite, but stick her in a schoolgirl outfit and she looked all of twelve. Especially if she acted all shy and timid and spoke in her squeaky voice. It was like she had practiced or something. Tara wasn't sure she could really pretend to be that young again at all. Well she could certainly pretend, it just wouldn't work because she wouldn't be able to pull it off. Part of it was the boobs. She had a nicely proportioned chest, the sort that didn't get in the way (too much) but caused men to take notice. She also had long legs. And, of course, she had a big ass.

Ace didn't have a big ass. Maybe that came with being Japanese. She was small all-around. "Nice ass," she commented, dryly.

Having since transferred the knife to her hand, Ace turned around to regard the derrière in question. "Thanks, do you like it? I got it custom-made in Italy," she said and continued walking. Tara laughed, but stopped short. Ace wasn't laughing. It was one thing to share a joke with a friend, but this joke wasn't shared. Creepy.

As they entered, King was packing up. Good. They were almost done here.

"Where is he?" she asked, referring to Joker. They'd brought an extra set of clothes and gear for Ace. She busied herself dressing.

He glanced at a screen and said to her, "Four floors down. Go play welcoming committee." To Ace he said, "Carry this for me."

She smiled as she tied her hair and said, "I'd love to handle your package."

That's what Tara had meant. Flirt with the boys, but still act creepy. She walked to the stairs on the other side of the building and listened. Joker was just about at the top. He was breathing hard, but sounded fine otherwise. He opened the door to the floor and walked through. He led with a pistol even though there was an SMG swinging at his side. He swept about, purposely ignoring her.

"Hi, honey! Glad to see me?" she asked, acting more excited than she felt.

He nodded, holstered the gun and paused to catch his breath. "I... think... the doctors need... to come up with more legs or wings... whew... or something. This stair-climbing program sucks!"

"Pursuit?" she asked. She couldn't hear any from this side of the door.

He shook his head. "Lost 'em at the halfway point. That King's a clever cookie, I'll give him that." He paused, looked at her a minute, quizzically.

"What?" she asked.

"Tara? Have you lost weight?" She punched him and he laughed. She punched him even harder for that.

Joker was a big, stocky middle-eastern guy, but without the big, bushy beard. In fact, his hair was close-cropped and he was clean-shaven. His face was rather round and plain, but he smiled a lot and she liked that very much, especially considering the line of work they were in.

As they made their way back she asked, "Take any hits?"

"A few. Why? You wanna hit on me, too?" he asked, hopeful.

"I should. _Hit_ you, that is," she chided.

"What about you? Break a nail?" She held up all ten fingers so he could see.

"Never saw me coming. Actually, never saw me at all. Died too quick."

"Remind me to lock my door next time I take a nap," he said with mock severity.

"What's the matter? Don't you want me to sneak into bed with you?" she teased. _Like I would anyway._

"Sure thing, Princess, but it wouldn't be any fun if I never woke up to enjoy it."

She frowned. She didn't like being called Princess. Whether she was or not wasn't the point, but she had never really been spoiled. Her parents had never been able to afford that and when they finally could it was the sort of thing she hadn't wanted. Joker liked to call her that, though. It didn't help that her callsign was Queen.

"Shut up," she punched him again.

He said nothing until they got back to King. "Yeah, baby! Nothing like a good firefight to get the blood pumping, don't you think?" Joker asked.

"Carry that," King indicated another bundle of equipment.

"What? After running up the stairs you want me to carry your junk? And you're not even ready to go, yet! It's not like you had anything better to do, sitting up here in the dark playing World of Warcraft or whatever."

World of Warcraft was another video game. Boys and their toys. She snickered. King frowned. Joker laughed, but hefted a bag of equipment over his shoulder and headed out to the roof.

She waited as he stashed the last of his crap in another duffel bag, then hauled it over her shoulder. He grabbed his rifle. It was an HK MSG-90A1. She knew because she had asked. She had asked because it looked neat, and King looked impressive carrying it. He also looked impressive shooting it and she knew it was another contingency. They were terribly exposed on the roof and it was important to be able to strike back if they came under fire from another rooftop. Either that or he carried it because he thought it made him look cool. She stepped out onto the roof with him behind.

Boys and their toys.

**Next**_ Felicity_


	4. Joker

**Joker's Wild**

They called him Joker. That was fine; the name fit like a glove. When he was with the _Carabinieri_ the guys had taken to calling him Private Joker, in honor of _Full Metal Jacket_. That might have something to do with him having said one of the other guys kind of looked like Private Pyle from the same flick. There wasn't much more than superficial resemblance, but the name stuck. So did Private Joker, but he'd finally gotten a promotion. He was just plain Joker now.

How boring that sounded, plain Joker. Whatever he was, plain was not the way to describe it. Never was in the past, and certainly wasn't now. He was like some sort of super-ass-kicking-bio-ninja-solider of doom. There was no room in that phrase for 'plain.' Plain-super... no. Maybe Super-plain-ass-kicking-bio-ninja-soldier of doom. Yeah. If there were such a thing, that was him. Except less plain.

Everything was ready. They had been deployed on another op, and it was time to put out. Joker was just the sort of guy to put out.

He laughed to himself and pondered how he'd come to this point. It all started in Syria. Mostly cuz that's where he'd been born. Nice place, nice people. Even if life did pretty well suck there compared to Italy, at least the people were still friendly. Just don't get into any trouble and you'll be fine. From his days with the _Carabinieri _he had been able to see firsthand how other countries dealt with rebellion and dissidence. There wasn't much variation, nation to nation. Mostly it was in how much press such events got.

He'd had a lot of family in Syria, not that he didn't now, but the world always seemed so much smaller and more comfortable in his youth. He had never seen it, but his parents had always mentioned that it was a dangerous place, hence their wanting to move. Back when Joker was just a boy, his father had gone off to seek fortune and prosperity elsewhere. While many of his countrymen were moving into Lebanon, Papa Joker had set his sights on Europe and eventually found a home in Italy. After a year or so the rest of the family followed, once father had been able to carve his own spot in the new country.

Father had been a tireless worker, but not the brightest bulb in the box — Joker's brothers and sister all argued about who took after father most in that respect — and even to this day, his Italian was lacking. So when the immigration people asked him what his name was, he had evidently replied, 'Abu Usama Tariq al-Imad bin Salim bin Hafiz Abd-al-Azim al-mişrī.' One can only guess what they must've said. Somehow, maybe with some Italian help from his coworkers and after the infinite patience of the immigration people they managed to butcher his name, keeping Tariq as his given name, dropping the al-Imad, al-mişrī and Abu Usama and giving him Salim and Hafiz as middle names, leaving the family name as Abdulazim. So to Italy he was Tariq Salim Hafiz Abdulazim.

Joker's given name was Rauf, but he was fine with Rolf or Ralf or Private Joker for that matter. For the most part he'd been called worse. His had been a decent childhood and he assimilated easily into the new culture. The family was nominally Muslim, but a lot of the daily ritual was given up for one reason or another. As he understood, Joker's youngest brother, Farouk, had experienced a reawakening of faith and had recently returned to Syria, but that was neither here nor there. That guy had always been a dillhole, anyway.

Father had held a number of different jobs, mostly in industry and his eldest brother, Usama, had also worked odd jobs to support the family. The next eldest was his sister, Atiya, and she was young enough to go to school and then university, afterwards. She'd eventually gotten a degree in math and did some stuff with numbers at some company somewhere. Joker was the next eldest (Farouk was the baby) after that and figuring he wouldn't be able to make it at uni he opted for a career in the military. It had been great fun telling his father that.

Joker had been accepted into the _Carabinieri_, the branch of the military that was mainly concerned with maintaining civil order. He generally liked people and liked working with them. He found he had a knack for dealing with civilians. In other words, he felt that serving in a branch of the military that was more geared towards combat (army, navy, etc.) would be a waste of his talent. Further, the _Carabinieri_ had a long and honorable reputation. He wouldn't admit it to most people, but that was certainly part of its draw.

He spent the first few years engrossed in the new job and carousing. Joker was a ladies' man. Or at least he liked to think of himself that way. A lot of ladies would agree. He was good-looking, in great shape from working and playing football (oh, how he had a passion for the sport!), and had a quick wit with a steady supply of jokes. And he was fun. People like fun.

Time dragged. Mother nagged him to settle down and get married. Soldiers were rotated in and out of his unit. The Americans sent troops to a small country overseas, Iraq, for no other reason than because they could. Things got messy. America didn't have a military police force (though the civilian police were doing their best to act more like the military and less like the police) and their army was trained for combat, not police actions. The situation got worse. Italy agreed to send _Carabinieri_ to help restore the rule of law. Old friends left and new ones came.

Somewhere after the old captain retired and a new one came to replace him, Joker began to have back pains. It started slow. A bit of stiffness when he woke up, or if he had been sitting for a while. Around the same time he stopped seeing other women and spent most of his time with just one. Her name was Lucia and she was a treasure. She was smart. She was a doctor, a real MD and not a guy with a piece of paper from uni that proclaimed him a doctor of obscure oil paintings of the late 14th century. She was ambitious. Her whole life had been more or less planned out. The next step for her was finding a husband and starting a family. She was, of course, stunningly beautiful. And she always had a comeback. He had a hard time saying something to her that left her speechless. Most of her retorts were pretty funny, too. And she was fantastic between the sheets. Most of all though, she was his.

Shortly after Joker had started seeing Lucia exclusively they made plans to wed. Faith hadn't mattered much to him since having left Syria so a Catholic wedding was fine by him. His parents were cool to the idea, but they very much approved of his betrothed. She was easy to like. In fact she got along well with all his family. And his mother was visibly relieved that he was finally to be married.

It was Lucia who convinced him to go to school and spend time on his education. He had a lot more spare time since having been domesticated (she loved to refer to him as 'domesticated' since he'd stopped his wild, partying ways) and a university degree would help with his promotions. And if he went into medicine she promised to help him with his homework.

He found he was good at learning once he was properly motivated, and Lucia was great at motivating him. She was also exceedingly knowledgeable about her chosen profession. When he was stumped on something, say, the muscle that moved the thumb, she would always know the proper name (_abductor pollicis brevis_), what it did and all sorts of other useful facts. In due course he had completed enough coursework to become a nurse... or a field medic.

But the back pains had been getting worse. He didn't play football anymore. It was just too much with his back hurting as much and as often as it did. She was certain there was something wrong with him and urged him to see a specialist. He did. The diagnosis was devastating. He had a rare type of autoimmune disease which was essentially a type of arthritis affecting his back. If it continued its course his spine would lock up.

It meant the end of his career, but his friends, family and his fiancé especially were supportive. Joker wanted to stay with the service as long as he could. His circle of friends slowly metamorphosed. He started spending lots more time around the older and more thoughtful guys and less around the younger, rowdy guys. He had been a young, rowdy guy most of his life. It was time for a change.

They had married in the fall, saying vows inside a beautiful old cathedral while the leaves changed colors outside. A huge chunk of his family and almost all of her family attended. So did tons of friends of hers from school and work. On his side were the few friends he had made at school and many friends from the _Carabinieri_. It had been the best day of his life.

Not too long following that, Joker met Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray, what a name. He sounded like a reject from _Clue_. He was a genial Italian man with a stocky build and gray just starting to show in his hair. He said that he represented an organization that was interested in medical research — among other things — and that they were prepared to offer him the chance of a lifetime. His back problems would only continue to worsen and he could be trapped taking immunosuppresive drugs merely to attain a basic level of functionality for the rest of his life. Or they could fix him.

"Fix me?" he had wondered aloud. Replace all the faulty parts with the latest in bioengineered, vat-grown bits, Mr. Gray explained. Return him to a normal life free of pain with a full range of movement. If everything went well he could probably even go back to playing football, even as his name was immortalized in the annals of medical history. But Joker had become more learned in the last few years. Replacing his spine — which is what they would need to do — was a dangerous procedure that could paralyze or kill him if the slightest mistake were made. Mr. Gray conceded the possibility. Even with the draw of football, it wasn't worth the risk to him. He was a married man with all sorts of responsibilities now. He couldn't afford to throw that away on a gamble. Mr. Gray had done his best, but then gracefully accepted the denial and went on his way.

He had discussed the odd proposal with his superior. The new captain was just as strict a disciplinarian as the old had been — maybe more so — but he was a good man and he gave sound advice. Joker had grown close to him after he'd realized how bad his back problems had become. "Never trust those doctors and scientists," Raballo had said, "There's always something they're not telling you." Sound advice, indeed.

Good things never seem to last though. Joker was an optimist; he was the sort to point out that bad things don't either, but it was hard to be too hopeful, then. Things had been fine and Joker and his new bride got to work starting a family. It was great fun and they took to the task with relish. But after a few months Lucia's frustration became plain. What if there was something wrong with one of them? They had spent a good deal of time blissfully engaged in sweet, sweet lovemaking, but she still hadn't managed to conceive. There was tension. Every now and again Joker's mother would ask about grandchildren. He could only imagine the pressure Lucia felt when _her_ mother broached the subject.

They both went to have the plumbing examined. Joker had spent a good deal of time visiting doctors' offices already, so he just had to schedule an extra visit with a fertility specialist one day. For her, she didn't want anyone to know where she was going or what she was doing. She bade him never mention the truth to anyone. The results were devastating. She was fine. His sperm count was low and the ones he did have just didn't seem to be good swimmers. There was no apparent reason. He didn't really smoke tobacco, but in his misspent youth he had been a cannabis connoisseur. Maybe that had something to do with it, maybe not.

Barely half a year after their wedding night, Lucia became cold and distant. Something had gone terribly awry and Joker had no idea how to fix it. The reason became clear in short order: their marriage was to be annulled. Annulled, as in everyone could pretend that it never really happened and the wedding service had been nothing more than a great party. The official reason, _disparitas cultus_, was that he had never been baptized as a Catholic and had deceived her and her family to that extent. He knew the real reason, but infertility was not enough reason to annul a marriage. A year or two later he would look back and think about the entire experience objectively. She really hadn't wanted to hurt him or leave him but he was certain that there had been a lot of pressure from her parents. It would have been just as easy for her to say that he couldn't perform. But she had evidently decided it would be nicer to call him a liar than a eunuch.

Another year went by. Joker's wit turned sharper and there were times when he had wounded when he had meant simply to rebuke. He still enjoyed the company of women but had no tolerance for relationship or commitment. He had been burned too badly the last time for that. He had tried to keep in touch with Captain Raballo following the older man's accident and discharge from the _Carabinieri_, but the Captain had taken a secretive new job which kept him busy most of the time.

Mr. Gray met him the day before his last day in the service. He had a somber demeanor and dozens of comforting words. He repeated the offer from before, but this time the caveat was made plain. If he took the new body he would work for the PRF doing things like surgical strikes, wetwork and escort work. They'd make him a commando who served the interests of the people.

Joker didn't care much for politics, but he knew the PRF had a great deal of public support among northerners and the well-to-do. And he had seen the faces of corruption within the government in his years with the _Carabinieri_. He hesitated.

Mr. Gray showed him one last thing, explaining that he hadn't wanted it to be the deciding factor, but desperately wanted Joker for their project. It was a copy of handwritten notes and an obituary article that would appear in the following day's newspaper. Joker had sighed. He always knew that old man had had a big heart, no matter how stern he had tried to appear. It was enough. He had been persuaded. Mr. Gray had talked more that day, but Joker's mind had been elsewhere. He read again the name, the reason for his friend's death: Fleda Claes Johansson.

_Strange how life worked_, he thought. The radio crackled, snapping him back to the present, "King. I'm going shopping." _Booyah. Showtime._ Queen acknowledged.

"Acknowledged, and could you pick up some creamer while you're there?" he said. King was a dour man, the sort of guy who needed some cheering up. Of course the creamer quip would almost certainly piss him off, but it was the thought that counted, right?

He was crouched behind a stairwell in the parking garage, watching some goons talk about cars as they kept an eye on their employer's ride. Their employer was his team's target and the car they were guarding, like their salaries, were paid for with tax dollars. Not that the moral high ground much mattered to Joker. He was a soldier. When his superiors told him to kill someone, he did. Even so, it felt kinda nice to be the good guys.

Except this op didn't require him to kill anyone. Just make lots of noise and hopefully, get shot. Yes, part of today was Joker target practice. Maybe next time they'd use him as a crash-test dummy. That would be moving up in the world.

He waited, watching them. They laughed, for just a moment forgetting about guarding anything and he slipped up the stairs while they were none the wiser.

Up he went until he was on the ground floor. From here things would need to proceed quickly. They didn't want too much public exposure, but he needed to engage the lobby guards and let them draw in reinforcements. The real deal was taking place upstairs and the fewer goons in suits upstairs, the better for his team.

"Joker. It's Miller time!" he said into the headset. The other two acknowledged. From here he was on standby, waiting for King to give the order to begin. Joker checked his guns, again, a nervous habit he'd picked up from his military service. Most of their missions were stealthy hit-and-fade actions where they relied on confusion, superior intelligence and proper planning beforehand. Stuff like that favored small firearms with subsonic muzzle velocities.

Joker was the sort of guy who liked to make noise, though. His standard sidearm was his H&K USP Compact chambered with FMJ .357 SIG ammo. The USP was the gun for putting bullets _through_ things. He checked the clip and made sure a round was chambered before sliding it back into its holster on his right side. His pride and joy, though, was his Smith & Wesson 460V strapped to his thigh. The thing was a monster of a gun, the type you could use for hunting buffalo. If he needed a gun with stopping power there wasn't much better. One thing you could say for the Americans, they built their guns and their engines big and sometimes there really was no substitute. He slid the cylinder out from the big revolver, spun it and snapped it back in place. With a round that large, the gun could only fit five shots.

He holstered the small artillery piece and gave his SMG a once-over. It was an MP5F, one of the newer variants on the MP5. He double-checked the gun, slid the bolt back to check the chamber, then snapped it back into place. Then he waited. The waiting was the part that sucked the most.

The landing where he was waiting was in a hall around the corner from the lobby. Once King gave the signal, they would start. Queen had to take out an elevator guard to secure a way out for their other teammate. Meanwhile, he was to engage the guards in the lobby and then give them the chance to return fire and call for help. Then run. He would need to ditch his pursuers before returning to their extraction point on the roof. He had to wait for Queen to give notice that her part was done lest the guards become suspicious too early.

"Awaiting confirmation from all team members." That was the phrase for mission start. Joker readied himself.

Minutes passed. No one came by to use the stairs. No one used the stairs these days, thankfully. Joker had to fight down the urge to check over his hardware again. He was tensed, like a coiled spring ready to launch into action, but for now there was the waiting.

"My life for Aiur," came the call. _Game on. About time._

"An African or European swallow?" He was already running down the hallway as he finished. He came within sight of the front desk. The guy at the desk was reading a book, two goons in suits were talking with each other and a third was sitting in the corner reading a newspaper, a briefcase sitting next to him.

"Hey boys!" he said to grab their attention. He got it. All four of them looked at him and the MP5 pointed their way. They dove for cover. All but the man in the chair whom Joker pretended not to notice. The other three weren't stupid enough to fire until they'd gotten under cover. He opened up at nothing in particular, sending a burst into the floor next to a man and another burst into a recently vacated chair. He got a few bursts in the chest from the Newspaper Guy. Evidently the briefcase next to him had held an SMG, just like he had expected. The shots didn't even stagger him, but he sent two more bursts towards his assailant who was already diving out of the way.

Pistol shots hit him, but none of them drew blood or even bruised too hard, he was sure. This armor was really good stuff! He sprayed a few more shots over the lobby, then turned and ran, back to the staircase. He burst through the door, angry men behind him, and started upwards, taking steps two at a time.

As he was just a few floors up the door on the ground floor opened and a few thugs came through, shooting at him. He grabbed his only grenade, an M84 flashbang, paused and yelled, "Merry Christmas!" before dropping it. He kept climbing. There was the sound of screaming and shouts. Evidently someone had mistaken it for a frag grenade. _Hehe._

The door opened on his landing just as he reached it. A skinny man in a suit holding a pistol gave him a surprised look before Joker crashed into him, sending him sprawling through the door. He kept climbing.

There were now a _lot_ of men following him up the stairs. Occasionally someone would squeeze off a few shots his way, but the few that found their target couldn't penetrate his body armor. He sprayed another burst downwards, not looking at where the shots went or whether they hit.

Ideally, he would reach the floor closest to the elevator, King would signal him, and he could ditch the pursuit. If that didn't work out it would get messy. The headset crackled to life, "Dairy aisle," came the call. That meant two things. One, he was right below the floor with the elevator. Two, a communications blackout was in effect. That would significantly reduce his pursuers' ability to coordinate, but it also meant he was on his own.

At the next landing he emptied the last of the SMG's magazine at the men below him, then ripped open the door, sprinted to the elevator and hit the button. The doors opened instantly. He reached inside, punched the button for the parking garage, then stepped out. He went down the hall and opened the door to the first room on his left as his pursuers opened the door to the landing. They were cautious. They needed to be; you could never be too careful when following a guy with a gun.

He stepped into the room, wondering why the light was already on and closed the door quietly behind him. Part of the preparations for the op had involved verifying that certain key hotel rooms were vacant and that the doors to the hotel interior as well as the exterior balconies were unlocked. This would allow the team to move through the rooms and hide in them. This was one such room, but it wasn't vacant. A pretty young woman done up as a maid had been smoothing down the sheets on the bed in the middle of the room. She froze when she saw him, her eyes wide with fright.

_Shit!_ This was a complication, but he could work with it. He levelled the empty SMG at her and held a finger to his lips to indicate he wanted silence. She stared at him in horror but said nothing. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the foot of the bed. He spun her around so that she was facing away from the door and pushed her to her knees. She made a squeaky noise, but then stifled it.

"Down here, put your head down and don't make any noise. If you do you'll die," he whispered in her ear. "Count to 100 to yourself, _silently_. Don't move or say a word until you've done that. Once you're finished I'll be gone and you can forget about me." She nodded, even though her head was almost touching the floor and she was facing away from him. Poor girl, he thought. It was true, though. If it came to a firefight with the government-owned underlings her chances of survival were slim to none.

Outside there was shouting and the sound of footsteps. Joker tried to calm himself. He closed his eyes and counted off seconds in his head. When it had been ten seconds since he had last heard footsteps he opened his eyes. He drew a knife and looked at the maid. She was still dutifully kneeling with her head down. He slid the door open and looked out in the hall. Clear. He closed the door as silently as he could and carefully jogged to the stairs. No guard on the stairs, no one in sight. _Excellent._

He slowly opened the door to the landing and peered around. The sound of men talking and running was clear, but it came from several floors below. He sheathed his weapon and started to climb silently. As expected, there were no enemies above him. He climbed a few floors quietly, then started to run up the stairs, sacrificing stealth for speed. He pounded up the stairs like it was light exercise. By the time he had reached the top though, he was out of breath. Panting, he brought out the H&K and pulled the door open.

Queen was standing outside the door, all red hair, painted nails and smiles. He swept about with the gun. He'd once heard a story from one of the transfers in his unit about a hostage situation that had gone south because the counter-terrorists hadn't been as thorough as they could have been. The bottom line had been just because you see a friendly doesn't mean it's safe. Of course, the fact that Queen was a brat who didn't like to be ignored factored into it somewhat. And the fact that he liked to push her buttons. Truth be told, he'd like to push something else between her supple—

"Hi, honey! Glad to see me?" she asked with feigned excitement.

Satisfied that she was alone he nodded, holstered the gun and paused to catch his breath. "I... think... the doctors need... to come up with more legs or wings... whew... or something. This stair-climbing program sucks!" Actually, he had climbed those stairs much more quickly than he ever could have hoped to before, even in the heyday of his football playing. These bodies were really amazing. And he was almost back to his resting heartrate and breathing already.

"Pursuit?" she asked, straining to hear any sounds from the stairs.

He shook his head. "Lost 'em at the halfway point. That King's a clever cookie, I'll give him that." He paused, looked at her a minute, quizzically.

"What?" she asked. She was like a cat. If you looked like you had a secret or knew something she didn't, she _had _to know.

"Tara?" he began, using her name to stress the familiarity, "Have you lost weight?" She punched him and he laughed. It was easy to get a reaction from a shallow woman. She punched him even harder for laughing at her.

They made their way back to meet up with their team leader. Curious, she asked, "Take any hits?"

"A few. Why? You wanna hit on me, too?" he asked, hopeful. Joker didn't really like shallow, bratty girls like this one, but she was gorgeous in an exotic way with the dark skin, emerald eyes and soft red hair. He often wondered what she was like in bed and teased her mercilessly. The same way Ace teased King. Actually, the slimmer girl flirted with him too, but he'd been there and done that. It hadn't been worth the time.

"I should. _Hit_ you, that is," she chided. She knew of his interest. It wasn't a secret between them or anything. Nor was the fact that he couldn't stand her attitude.

"What about you? Break a nail?" How they had ever gotten saddled with her was anyone's guess. As far as he knew, neither of the women in the team had had any military experience. Whatever else he might say about Ace she was always cool and professional. This girl wanted to run ops with painted nails and ribbons in her hair. But not only was she a pleasant distraction from the harsh realities of his job she was fun. There was a lot to be said for that.

She held up her hands so he could see. Not a scratch on any of her nails. "Never saw me coming. Actually, never saw me at all. Died too quick." And there was the key. It didn't matter if no one saw you. And no one ever did see her. She was too good. The way she moved, the way she carried herself. Like she had cats for parents or something. Partly it scared him. That someone could be so quiet and so deadly. Partly it excited him, made him wonder if there were other times when she made a lot of noise...

"Remind me to lock my door next time I take a nap," he said with mock severity.

"What's the matter? Don't you want me to sneak into bed with you?" was the retort. _What a tease. But if she did..._

"Sure thing, Princess, but it wouldn't be any fun if I never woke up to enjoy it." She hated it when he called her Princess. It had occurred to him the first day they had met. She was such a princess, such a daddy's girl. And her callsign was Queen. Beautifully serendipitous. He only said it when he wanted to irritate her and after the last comment, that's just what he wanted. She could be a lot of fun, but sometimes she was just a bitch.

"Shut up," she punched him again, harder this time. When someone resorted to something simple like 'shut up' or 'fuck you' they had been outmaneuvered in the game of words and had nothing better to say. That's how it usually ended with Queen. Sneaking around in the dark all the time meant she wasn't too bright.

He held his peace until they got back to King. Not that he wasn't interested in taunting her any longer, but it stopped being fun when she couldn't think of a better comeback.

The smaller man was packing up his surveillance and communications gear when they got there. Joker always thought of King as a lieutenant, though he had no idea what rank he had held in the army. He knew the other man was an army boy, but he had never asked about it. Never cared much. Still didn't. "Yeah, baby!" he roared, "Nothing like a good firefight to get the blood pumping, don't you think?"

His colleague eyed him in distaste. "Carry that," he said, indicating another bundle of equipment.

"What? After running up the stairs you want me to carry your junk? And you're not even ready to go, yet! It's not like you had anything better to do, sitting up here in the dark playing World of Warcraft or whatever." Actually he had been instrumental to the success of the mission. More importantly, he had been key in keeping Joker out of a nasty firefight. But it certainly wouldn't do to remind him of that.

Queen snickered. King frowned at him. That guy really needed to lighten up. He needed to remember how to laugh. Or learn if he'd never done it before. Joker showed him how, then grabbed the indicated bundle and stepped out into the night.

What a crew to be stuck with. Maybe the joke was on him.

Next:_ Hollow One_


	5. Ace

**Ace in the Hole**

For as long as she could remember she had been empty inside. Her mother had died when she was young, leaving her with her father and brother. She had spent a lot of time in her youth fending for herself and learning how to be independant. She could not blame them. The rest of her family always had something else that needed doing which was more important than spending time with her. It was alright. She figured they were important people and important people had important things to do.

But that was not much consolation to a lonely little girl. She was not very close to anyone at school, either. Of course everyone with whom she had dealt was very polite to her, but there was still a certain distance. But that was the way things were in Mihara, the town where she had grown up, so she figured everywhere was like that.

Somewhen she made the connection that this was not necessarily normal. She saw how the other children's parents doted on them. Father did care about her, but he never really showed that when he was home. Often he was not home, doing one thing or another at his job. Work kept him busy. Sometimes he was kept busy enough that it was easier for him just to stay at a hotel in Osaka rather than braving the commute. When he was home he paid special attention to her, bought her cute things... made her feel loved.

She read plenty of books and comics where people were blissfully in love, quite often with tragic consequences. That made it all the better, she supposed. Stories where the prince and princess were in love and lived happily ever after were cute, but she had an odd fondness for tragedy. She particularly liked an English tale, _Romeo & Juliet_, about two lovers who kill themselves at the end rather than live without the other. _That was real love_, she thought.

But no one felt that way about her. The only one who came close was father, and he was distant, emotionally and physically.

As she entered her adolescence, two things became apparent to her. The first bit was that older men had started paying much more attention to her than before. This was terribly flattering and not at all unwanted. After all, _she_ was unwanted. If there was something that she could do to become desirable to the people around her — the children at school, her family, creepy old businessmen — then she would gladly do it. The downside was that father became more distant than he had been. This was rather devestating since he was the only person who really mattered to her. Rather, he was the only person to whom she seemed to matter. Something had changed between them and she was at a loss to understand. Sometimes when he looked at her she could see something in his eyes. Some sort of alien emotion that had never been there before. It was somewhat similar to the look that she got from the older salarymen.

Second, she was getting weaker. The second part was really strange, because, as she understood, she should be getting stronger as she grew older. But the redeeming feature was that she garnered special attention because of it.

The weakness part was troublesome because she would occasionally fall if she was not too concentrated on walking. Sometimes someone would laugh, but at school there was always someone available to help her up. At home this was not always so. And for her brother, the rare times he was home, it was always an inconvenience. That part would not have been so bad except for the fact that he would let her know in no uncertain terms how much he did not like her and how much he wished she would just die and get it over with. She did not quite understand that part, either, but it was hurtful all the same.

She did not like her brother, mostly due to the hurtful things he said, but also because he was terribly self-important. But he never spoke such unkind words when father was home. The reason was unclear to her, but he was always polite when father was around, though she could see the disgust and hatred in his eyes.

Father was also polite, but distant. There was something wrong, something that she had done to push him away. She had no way of knowing what it was so she could not even begin to fix or undo it. She wanted to ask, but she was afraid the asking might drive him even further away. It was a hopeless situation.

In time she learned just what it was that interested older men so much. She had heard about it at school. 'Dating with compensation' was the term. _Enjo kousai_. A lot of the older girls talked about it. Some of them did it. She was keen to try it.

It took a lot of courage for such a shy girl, but she found it easier than she had expected. Mostly because all she had to do was smile and look timid. She was good at being bashful. Smiling was harder because so little made her happy. But she could force a smile when she needed to, and the rewards were worth it. For a short time she was someone's object of desire. And there was dinner, maybe shopping, and cash afterwards. But those were less important than the feeling of really being _wanted_ by someone for a time, however short.

The first time had been the worst. She had been nervous, not exactly knowing what to expect. Dinner had been nice. Afterwards, at the hotel had been awkward. There had been some pain, a little blood. But it had been worth it, in any number of ways.

Subsequent times became much easier. Her nocturnal activities gave her an impressive amount of spending cash and an array of toys and new clothes. But every few nights she could pretend that there was someone in the world who absolutely adored her. That was worth more than any of the material stuff. But when it was over, when she made her way home, she always felt empty.

Still she grew older and still her muscles grew weaker. Some days she had trouble getting out of bed. Most often there was someone around to help. Sometimes there was someone around, but it was someone who pretended not to notice. Not being able to push yourself up from lying down was almost as bad as being ignored. Almost.

Father grew concerned enough to take her to a doctor. At first he had thought she had been faking, just to get attention. It was true. She did love attention, but she was genuinely having problems and getting weaker.

The doctors ran tests, poked her with needles and did other doctor-things. Their diagnosis was that she was afflicted with a rare muscular disease that would waste away her muscles and eventually affect her heart. She would probably die in another four or five years.

She took the news rather well, all things considered; life was barely worth living for her now as it was. Father took the news well, too. Almost too well. She hoped it would have bothered him more. She wanted him to be distraught over it. She wanted for him to care. But he had simply bowed, thanked the doctors for their work and left.

Suddenly she found herself agreeing with her brother. Why could she not just die now and get it over with? It would surely be preferable to slowly wasting away in a hospital bed. She was certain that was to be her fate anyway.

A week passed that way. The doctors were concerned at how weak her heart was getting and how fast. It was as if she had lost the will to live. Truth be told, she had lost that a while back, but now she found herself actively wishing for an end.

It had happened one day when she was watching some cartoon or another. Her father had come to visit her again. He did that every day, but he never said much. She felt that it was more a face-saving device than anything else. The hospital staff would certainly take notice and think less of him if he was conspicuously absent. Even so, she felt absolutely horrible about it. Father had gotten little enough sleep before she had taken ill. Now he would spend time with her as she lie in bed, get a few hours of sleep at a nearby hotel, then go straight to work. It was wearing him down and she hated to see him like that, but how do you tactfully tell your father not to visit you? But that day there had been another visitor.

He was a burly Caucasian man with grey hair and a worried face. He had brought her a stuffed _Hello Kitty!_ pillow that was exceedingly cute. He did not actually speak Japanese, but he had brought an interpreter. After the introductions had been made he asked if she wanted to live. If he could fix her, cure her disease, would she live? It was a candid question, and he had looked right into her eyes as he had spoken. The man with him translated and he continued to stare as the question hung in the air. Her reply had been automatic. Of course she had wanted to live. What girl would not? If he saw the lie he said nothing about it.

The man who had been introduced as Mr. Gray had gone outside with her father and the interpreter. They talked. She closed her eyes and listened, and was just barely make out what the interpreter had said. They were negotiating. She was being sold.

In short order the preparations were made and she was transferred to Italy. She had studied English in school as part of the standard curriculum, but she eventually would need to learn Italian. Italian was hard. Their were some vague connections to English, but those were the exception, not the rule. And her English was not particularly good to begin with.

Then there were the other things she needed to learn. After the doctors had performed their various surgeries she had to learn how to use her body again. That was a joy in itself, because once she had healed enough to get around under her own power she found that her new body was amazing. She could jump, flip, run, walk around on her hands and (eventually) balance on a tightrope. She had gone from being a weakling to being superhuman.

Slowly the novelty wore off. She had things to do now. She was an important person with important things that needed doing. But one thing had not changed. She was still empty inside.

------------------------------------------------

Her given name was Yasuko, but none of her teammates called her by that name. To them she was Ace, and to them she was many things. Today she was an assassin, charged with the death of a member of the Italian senate. The reason had been simple; the man was an icon of the corruption of the current regime. His death would be a signal to the rest of the government that justice would not be denied. She was sure there was more to it than that, but it had not been her who had asked. The other woman, Queen, had wondered. She always did. Ace did not care. Her superiors wanted this man dead. The reason was unimportant.

The man was a notorious pedophile. That was the key. Ace had been blessed with a slender, petite frame (though the doctors could have made her look like whatever she wanted, within reason, she would rather be herself) and she had had plenty of experience attracting older men. They had dressed her in a schoolgirl uniform and managed to replace the girl who would have been the object of the senator's lust with her.

Once the man arrived they would be alone. It would be an easy kill. Getting out would be more of a problem, but their leader had a clever plan worked out. Her orders were to slay the target then flee, avoiding any guards. If everything went as planned she would be fine. If not, she would be in terrible danger. She had no way to contact the team and the only equipment she had available to her was a single knife, her outfit and an empty pink purse that was part of the illusion of being a schoolgirl.

She fidgeted nervously while trying to calm herself. King should be able to see her on the tiny camera in the room. She did not know where it was, but she was told that one had been placed prior to their arrival. Evidently one of the senator's own guards had grown disgusted with his employer and had offered to help with his elimination. So far, so good. Older men like her target were often attracted to youthful traits like innocence, nervousness and shyness. She was good at pretending to be all of those.

The door opened. Thugs in suits walked in, a man with a handheld doodad of some sort that looked like a radio and two guys who looked like bruisers. The man with the radio swept the room for bugs. The other goons stood around looking menacing. She was sure she could take all three if she needed to, even with nothing more threatening than a purse. But that was not part of the plan. She stood there, looking nervous and clutching her purse, eyes downcast.

The mark stepped in. He was a fat balding man with beady eyes. His gaze travelled greedily over her. The suit he wore was elegant and tasteful, unlike its owner. The fact that he thought she was a schoolgirl did not bother her so much. That was a game she had played many times. He was practically slavering at the thought of indulging his appetites. That and his girth implied that he was a man who knew little of restraint or discipline. That disgusted her. His death would be a pleasure.

The suit pronounced the room clean. He and the other two left, one of them pausing to dim the lights. The senator waited until the door had closed then approached her slowly. "What's your name?" he asked in Italian.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," she said in Japanese, taking a step back.

"Oh? You don't speak Italian?" he asked, his eyes bright with glee.

She shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.

He thought a minute, then asked her name in Japanese. "Junko," was her reply. She asked if he spoke Japanese, but she already knew the answer. It was all part of the act, though. A man was exceedingly simple to anticipate and manage when he let his lower extremity do the thinking for him. And she had been managing such men for years.

In Japanese again he said that he did not understand. The accent was bad but the pronounciation was on. It was probably a phrase he had memorized. She fidgeted again and looked away, at the bed. Pretending to realize just what it was she was looking at she looked back down at her feet quickly. His eyes had followed hers, however.

He stepped closer, practically fidgeting with anticipation. "Let's get you out of these," he said, pulling her shirt off, "my delectable little muffin." She acquiesced, trying to look scared, thoroughly disgusted by this oaf pawing at her. She tried to bring a tear but she had never been good at that. She called him a fat, worthless pile of shit in Japanese, but she did it in such a scared tone that he was none the wiser. In fact it only seemed to excite him more.

In short order he had stripped her, then he pushed her onto the bed, naked. She looked up, meeting his gaze with frightened eyes. "I'll enjoy sending you to hell, old man," she said. Again the only things he heard were foreign words and the feigned fear in her voice. He had only undressed partway, such was his urgency. He pushed himself on top of her while she pretended to struggle and continued to heap abuse on him in ways he would never understand. He even smelled disgusting.

Then she heard it, off in the distance. Automatic gunfire, small caliber stuff. _At last_, she thought It was time to end this charade. She squirmed backwards a bit. He followed eagerly. She reached back, under the pillow for the blade. He leaned his head down to whisper something perverse in her ear. Her hand wrapped around the hilt. The blade came up while she crushed his head into the side of her neck to prevent him from making a sound to alert the guards. He had only a fraction of a second to realize something was wrong before she jammed the blade into the back of his neck at the base of his skull. Blood squirted out of the wound. The body convulsed, then was still. In the future she would need to control herself a bit better. The knife had gone clean through and come out the other side, dripping blood on her. She rolled him over, on the bed so he was face up, staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

_What a disgusting man._ She spent no time revelling in her victory, though. A few quick steps carried her to the balcony door. She unlocked it and slipped through. The shock of cool night air was invigorating. She stepped out, gauged the distance to the next balcony and backed up, shoving her weapon in her mouth to free her hands. Two short bounds brought her to the railing. She hopped on top of it and leapt to the other balcony, ducking to avoid hitting her head on the balcony above. She opened the door and stepped through it into the next room.

She crossed this room quietly, listening to the men who had been posted outside the senator's room. They were yelling to him but he was not responding. Their patience at an end they opened the door and stepped inside. Greeted with the hideous sight of their employer's corpse they both ran into the room. Now was her chance.

She readied her blade, opened the door to the hallway and verified that the way was clear. She sprinted down the hall towards the elevator. Someone had heard her. The thugs were in pursuit. She rounded the corner and ran for the elevator. Its doors were open and she was certain she had caught sight of Queen dodging around the corner, running for the stairs. Another guard was lying facedown in a pool of his own blood by the elevator doors. Score one more for the good guys. The doors were starting to close, but she would make it in with time to spare. She jumped through, pushed the button for the ground floor and spun around to look at her pursuers. They had come around the corner and one of them fired blindly at her. He missed. As the doors closed she blew kisses at them.

Putting the knife back in her mouth again, she hopped up and pulled herself through the hatch in the top of the elevator. As the car started to descend she jumped for the ladder on the side of the shaft. She started to climb. Everything had gone perfectly and she was almost home.

A floor or two below the top, the elevator doors opened. Queen looked down at her, squatted and asked, "Ewww. Do you know where that's been?" She meant the knife. There was still blood on it. The thought of wiping it off had not really occurred to Ace. She had been busy. Now, however, she tried to focus on it, almost looking at it cross-eyed. She held onto a rung with one hand and grabbed the knife with the other. She looked at it, remembering how she had put an end to that foul man. It had meant the completion of the important part of her mission, but she really did not feel anything, one way or the other. She never did.

"Sure do," she said without emotion. She put it back in her mouth and climbed the last of the way to the top. Queen offered her a hand off the ladder and onto the top floor. She accepted it.

The woman did not like her and it was no secret, but Ace was not bothered by that fact. Queen was girly, squeamish and obsessed with being cute. Ace had no use for any of that. The other woman had also played a bit at being her friend, but there was an undercurrent of disgust and intolerance that Ace did not understand and did not appreciate. Queen was like a lot of girls Ace had known throughout school. Pretend towards friendliness when it suited them to do so. Ace had no use for such deceit. She would rather be alone.

She turned and walked away, carrying the knife in her hand.

"Nice ass," Queen said behind her. She was not sure whether it was meant as a bad joke or a veiled insult. She doubted it was was any sort of real compliment. The woman's opinion of herself was far too high.

She turned, looking down at her petite booty. "Thanks, do you like it? I got it custom-made in Italy," She kept walking. Queen started to laugh, then stopped short. That was fine. It had not really been meant as a joke anyway.

The other thing she disliked about Queen was that she was dumb. Subtle things went over her head. She seemed to say exactly what was on her mind and her emotions were easy to read, plain as the noon sun. What a fool. She probably loved to gossip. Ace hated that too. Not that there was much gossiping going on where they worked, but she had hated the gossipy girls in Japan and she hated them in Italy just as much.

They returned to the rendezvous point in silence. King was there packing up his gear. He said nothing as they arrived, just coninued his work.

"Where is he?" Queen asked, referring the last member of their squad.

Ace did not like King. There was no one she really liked on her team, but he was the one whom she disliked the least. He was quiet, professional and had a keen intellect. He spoke when he needed to and was clear and concise when he did, in stark contrast to the constant, useless banter of the other two.

Maybe it was more than that, though. He was part of their team because of something in his past. He had lost something terribly important to him and he spent a good deal of time brooding on that. Maybe she felt sympathetic. He had lost something where she had never really felt anything. Or maybe that was an optimistic way to look at a bad situation. Someday she would have to find out more about it.

He glanced at a screen and said to the redhead, "Four floors down. Go play welcoming committee." To Ace he said, "Carry this for me."

She was just tying her hair back as a prelude to suiting up. A smile crossed her lips and she said, "I'd love to handle your package." It was a game she played. He never reacted, but she toyed with him just the same. The guy was made of ice. Joker called him 'Deadeye' sometimes, the way he called Queen 'Princess.' Both nicknames were apt. She really was a princess though she pretended not to see it. He was a crack shot, but he also had a rather blank stare. As if a part of him were dead.

With thoughts of him on her mind she finished dressing, shouldered her burden and stepped out onto the roof. She lingered on the threshhold a minute, looking back at him. _As if a part of him were dead_, she thought again. She knew just what that was like.

**Next:** _Haunted_


	6. Haunted

**Ghost from the Past**

Ace threw a quick right followed by a heavy straight punch with her left. He had expected a follow-up to the jab, but she was so fast he almost hadn't gotten out of the way in time. Almost. King reached for her left wrist but she spun away and translated that momentum into a roundhouse kick delivered with her left leg. He ducked and came up with an uppercut to her thigh as it swept past. She managed to wiggle out of the way so he scored only a glancing blow.

It was enough to knock her off balance. The little girl fell backwards, rolled and came up in a defensive crouch. He had pursued, hoping to take advantage of the distraction, but she was just too quick. And after having spent so many years fighting right-handed opponents, it was disconcerting to spar with a southpaw.

She grinned evilly. "You're getting slow, _oji-san_." The other thing he didn't like was her habit of taunting her opponents. Joker was great at trading blows with her, physically and verbally. Queen got flustered sometimes. Most often it pissed King off, but he had become used to it enough to pay little attention. She did it to throw him off balance, of course. Make him drop his guard, make a mistake. It had even worked once.

Today was a sparring day. They always had an hour or two of daily practice at the range, but physical activities like endurance runs and sparring were relegated to specific days. Each of them had their own schedule as well, and today saw Ace and King trading blows on soft, squishy mats designed to reduce the shock of getting knocked down. The room was large, square, padded and mostly devoid of decoration. The old, faded bloodstains on the floor didn't really count as 'decoration.' Fluorescent lights hung above, but the windows brought in enough sun that the lights were off.

He was in an old pair of fatigues, faded and slashed at the knees so they were more like shorts and less like pants. His top was a simple cotton shirt and his feet were bare. This wasn't a place for boots. Likewise, Ace was clad only in a white pair of sweatpants and a sports bra.

A naïve onlooker might have berated him for fighting with a girl. They looked so mismatched. He wasn't particularly tall, standing just under 178 cm and built like a middleweight boxer. In contrast, she was a slip of a girl, standing just up to his chin and looking like she weighed no more than 50 kilos, soaking wet. Such an onlooker, however, would be gravely mistaken.

King thought that he had an edge in strength but wasn't sure. He'd seen her press and deadlift weights in the weightroom that gave him trouble, but she also had a habit of pushing herself. She was quicker than him, too. That had been proven enough times already. But he had been boxing and wrestling since before his time in the army and had a wealth of experience from which to draw. As he understood, before the surgery she could barely stand under her own power.

His experience usually won out, but she was getting better quickly. It meant he had to spend a lot of time trying to anticipate what she would do and when. He felt a great swell of pity for anyone who got into a fight with Ace thinking she was just a helpless girl.

He shifted his stance to favor his left side. The doctors had told them that the dominance of one hand over the other was partly mental and partly physiological and that all of them had the capability to be ambidextrous now that they'd been 'modified.' They just needed to unlearn the tendency to favor their rights over their lefts. Ace was very good at that and it made sparring with her rough. King tried it now to see if it could shake her.

"What's the matter, King, cat got your tongue?" A harmless jab. He tried to grab her again, but she was expecting it. There weren't any rules here. For one on one fighting, King knew that grappling was far superior to boxing or any other combat based around strikes. He just had to be able to grab her. She was elusive though; it was like trying to catch the wind.

Rules weren't the only thing lacking. There really wasn't any safety equipment or referee either. They healed quickly enough that minor scrapes, cuts and bruises were gone within a day. Bare-knuckle fighting for them was quite safe, unless they were really trying to kill each other. Even so, their hands were wrapped.

"I don't know why you ask the same questions, girl. You'll just get the same answers." He tried a few jabs of his own. Normally he fought defensively, waiting patiently for a mistake from his opponent, then exploiting that mistake ruthlessly. Taking the offensive was useful for throwing her off guard, though.

"Maybe I should try something different, then," she said as she delivered a swift kick to his gut. She had stepped close to kick, but danced away as he tried to grab her again. His jab had connected, but the kick hurt a bunch more. "I know everyone else's story but yours. What could be so secretive about a King's past that he can't share."

He didn't reply. He focused instead on steadying his breathing. Her kick had been a bit high. Lower and it could have knocked the wind out of him.

"We're all here because we would've died otherwise. Or at least we wouldn't have been able to live." She regarded him as she waited for him to catch his breath. "One of the doctors once mentioned that you had volunteered for this."

"Don't ask. You don't want to know." He was tired of this. Joker hadn't bothered asking. It was a guy thing. Queen had inquired about his past once, but had just looked sympathetic and had never pressed the issue. Not so with Ace. She liked to dig.

"But what if I do?" A few more jabs. He let one connect and tried to grab her wrist again. He was getting too good. She might get a broken wrist for her troubles next time. "I heard it's something to do with revenge. Like the government targeted your family or something."

He feinted left and grabbed for her with his right. She mistook it for a punch and slipped ever so slightly to the left, bringing a right hook into his side, above a kidney. With one hand already on her he dragged her closer, grabbing the back of her right arm with his left. She jerked her weight backwards, trying to escape his grip. He held on tight, but she had overbalanced and was falling. He wouldn't let go and started to fall on top of her. Her back hit the mat and her feet came up, pushed into his chest and flung him over. He sailed a short way though the air and did his best to turn his landing into a roll. He rolled off his side, gained his feet and spun around. She was already up.

"You don't look like much of a mamma's boy to me. Maybe it was some brotherly or sisterly love you miss. I'd heard you'd had a sister—"

He straightened and glowered at her. "Just drop it."

Her eyes narrowed. "Why? Was your little sister more to you than just family? Maybe you were _really_ close." She'd scored and she knew it. She just didn't know how badly.

"Don't go there. You won't like where it leads," he said, the menace plain in his voice. He brought his guard up again. This could get messy.

"That can happen, I hear," she said as if he hadn't spoken. "Especially if you were used to sleeping together and—"

He'd stopped hearing after that and the only thing he could see was red. He vaguely remembered rushing her, seeing shocked surprise in her eyes. She had kicked him in the leg but he hadn't felt it. They collided and his weight bore her to the ground. One hand pinned her by the throat so she couldn't move. She'd feebly grabbed at his arm, trying to loosen his grip when he hit her the first time. Her hands came up, trying to reach his face but it was no use. His arms were longer. He hammered her head again and again, maybe three or four times when his conscious mind finally got control of his body again.

Looking down on his handiwork he frowned and rolled off of her. Her face was a mess of blood and broken bone. She rolled to her side and let blood seep onto the mat in a crimson drizzle. He stood up, turned around and walked to the door — and collapsed when his leg gave out. Dully, he became aware of his own wounds. She had kicked him as he'd rushed in, and the leg wasn't bearing weight. Oh, and it hurt like hell, too. Probably a fracture, but he would need an x-ray. His left arm was still bleeding from where her fingers had dug in and the blood on his right hand wasn't all hers. None of that was as bad as his leg, though.

He got to his feet and hobbled towards the door. He could hear her coughing up blood behind him. As he got to the door she spoke. Her pronunciation was off, probably from a broken jaw, "She meant a lot to you?"

He turned, partway to look at her. She was sitting up and breathing heavily. There was blood all over her face and it had run down her front. "She still does," was his reply.

------------------------------------------------

His shin had a simple fracture. He had learned that their bones were still mostly made out of bone, but reinforced with something else, something springy. He'd been told what it was but had forgotten. The bottom line was that broken bones practically set themselves. The shin had been splinted and should be good to go in another 48 hours or so. It would be another few days after that until he could stress it again by sparring or running on it. He'd done a number on her face, breaking her nose, jaw and shattering a cheek. It would require a bit of surgery to ensure she looked the same afterwards.

The doctors had been skeptical. What had happened that they'd hurt each other so badly? "Nothing serious. It had just been a sparring match that had gotten out of hand." She had written that on a sheet of paper because the doctors hadn't wanted her to speak. He had agreed. Things had just gotten out of hand. Everyone knew there had been more to it but neither Ace nor he were talking and no one wanted to press the issue.

No one except Joker. He was standing in King's room, arms crossed, staring at the wounded man lying in bed. "What the fuck was that all about? " he had demanded.

King sighed. "Things got a little out of hand, that's it. You've heard it from both of us, already."

"That's a _lot_ of out of hand, man," was the reply. "What happened that it 'got out of hand,' anyway?"

"Go away," he said.

Joker frowned. He was barely a half meter from King's bed which sat in a corner of the small room. The floor was hardwood, as it was in much of the building, and the walls were white and plain. Despite the size, King had managed to shoehorn a small desk and a slim bookcase into his room. A footlocker at the foot of the bed had several handguns and a rifle on it. Windows near the top of the walls let in starlight from outside.

"Maybe I should drag you out of bed and beat some answers out of you."

"Tough guy, huh? Threatening a cripple..."

"Yeah, you're right. Real tough guys beat the shit out of little girls."

"She asked for it. I only gave her what she wanted."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

King lied back, bringing his arms up to rest his wrists on his eyes. "She was bugging me about something and I told her to drop it. She wouldn't. I told you, I only gave her what she asked for."

Joker shook his head, and leaned against the chair. "Maybe you should tell me about it."

"Maybe you should fuck off."

"You owe it to me, man. You owe it to us."

"Really?" he asked, sitting up and looking over at the big man. "Since when do I owe you shit?"

"When we're out in the field, my life's in your hands. I need to know the guy who's got my back isn't going crazy foaming at the mouth or something, know what I mean? You know all about us and we don't know a damn thing about you, except rumors."

"Now there's rumors about me?"

"Well, shit! There sure as hell will be, especially after you broke Ace's face like that!"

King sighed. He was right about the first part. It would be terribly unfair to his team for them to be endangered by something from his past. He'd thought that past was mostly behind him now, but Ace had shown that to be untrue.

"You love your family?" he asked, lying back again.

"Of course," he replied at once.

"What would you do if they were gunned down by Mafia thugs?"

Joker pulled the chair over, sat down on it backwards so he was facing King, but his head hung over the top and he ended up looking at the floor. "That depends on a lot of things. If my family had gotten involved in something they weren't supposed to... well, I would have hoped someone would have taken it up with me, first. Like if they needed money or a loan or something and loan sharks came looking for repayment. Maybe sell off my little brother, he's a fuck-up anyway. Nah. I think there would be a long line of gangsters waiting for an ass-kicking. Why?" he asked, looking up. "Is that your story?"

"What if it was the government who had killed them instead of the Mafia? What if it was someone you couldn't touch?"

The big man pondered that a bit before answering. "Hmmmmm. I wouldn't take that well at all, I don't think."

"What if your family was shot because they had seen something they weren't supposed to. If they were targeted to guarantee silence," King said, as he sat up, staring intently at the bigger man. Joker looked up. Their eyes met. "Then add in the fact that they were shot and left in agony—"

"I get the picture, man," Joker said, looking back down at the floor. There was a silence between them. Joker had never been one for silence. "So what happened with Ace, then?"

"You know how she likes to talk shit when sparring." Joker grunted assent. "She wanted to provoke me and that's what she did."

"That would explain the arm," he said, indicating King's left forearm. It was covered in bruises and cuts where her fingers had dug into him. "I was wondering about that."

"Yeah," King said, examining the damage, holding his arm up, hand open. The hand closed into a fist which he let drop. "I didn't even feel it."

"And that's it?" Joker asked, looking up.

King shrugged. "There's details, but you got the important bits."

"You know who did it?"

"Not exactly, but I've got an idea. The news blamed it on Mafia hitmen, but I don't think that's all there is to it."

"What do you mean 'you don't think'? Either you have hard evidence or you're shooting blind."

"I have a lead and some research to do."

"You gonna go all ape-shit when you find out who it was?"

"No. I need to be certain. Once I am... I'm not sure, but... I'll figure it out. It's not something that's going to interfere with my job, if that's what you're thinking."

"Yeah, I hope not." Joker stood, pushed the chair back under the desk. "Look, I'm gonna go talk to Tara. She was pretty whacked out about what you'd done today. A lot of people were. You'd think Dr. McAllister had never seen blood before, the way she looked at Ace."

King only nodded.

"You heal up, now. Vinny is trying to schedule our next assignment and this is gonna be a setback." Vinny was what Joker called Vincenzo Garabaldi, the team's strategic planner. The assignments they got, the orders from up above, came through him. "I'll see you around, man," he said, making an exit.

King gave a curt goodbye, then waited until he heard Joker's footsteps recede. It had been fourteen months or so since he had joined this outfit and gone under the knife. Mr. Gray's promise to him had so far been hollow. "_We can help you find the killers, son. All you have to do is help us._" He had known there was something wrong about the entire thing, but it had taken a few months for the grief to drain away enough for him to think clearly. But when he'd had the time to think about it, it just didn't add up.

He pulled the small package from under his pillow. He had no idea from where it had come. Maybe Mr. Gray had gotten it to him covertly, somehow. It had been on his bed when he had hobbled in after having had his leg treated. It was a small, nondescript envelope just the right size for 3" X 5" photos. He had just barely looked at the first when Joker had accosted him, and now he was exceedingly impatient to look at the rest.

The first photo was the one he had seen earlier. It was a shot of the restaurant the day of his family's murder. He could see them near the bottom of the photo, his sister chatting on her cell while the parents regarded something in a shop near the right side of the picture. There was an excellent view of the street and the gaggle of journalists who were accosting the senator was in the foreground. King studied it in detail. It looked to have been from a third or fourth floor window on a building which sat right where the street should have been. The street on which the restaurant sat made a sharp turn at the one end and continued on in both directions. King had remembered that. There had been a storefront with offices over it. There probably still was.

The next few were shots of the senator talking at the media. The fourth showed a blaze of gunfire from across the street. The official report had fingered two hitmen with CZ Scorpions. One of them had been shot by the senator's men and the other had gotten away. He switched the photos to his left hand. The knuckles of his right had been pulverized against Ace's face and they hadn't taken the abuse well.

The next shots were of the gunmen, but the seventh had an artifact at the top of the shot, maybe reflection from the sun or something. In the seventh shot his entire family was huddled on the ground, but still alive. The senator had been taking cover. Journalists had been shot and some lay dying in the street. The eighth shot had another artifact at the top. Additionally, the senator's head had exploded in this shot.

King closed his eyes and tried to remember that day clearly. Most of the memories he had from that time were of his sister, looking at him, her eyes glazed with pain. He shook those thoughts from his head as he tried to concentrate. When he had first gotten there he had surveyed the scene. There was something off, something that hadn't been right. He wanted to get up and walk around. Pacing sometimes focused his thoughts, but his leg wouldn't tolerate his weight right now.

His eyes flew open suddenly as the thought came back to him. The senator had been shot once in the head. Like he had been sniped...

King held the seventh and eighth pictures together again and looked at the strange artifacts in the upper corner. He backtracked again and compared one of the other shots. The similarities were too much. That 'strange artifact' was muzzle flash.

The cameraman must've noticed that too, because the next shot was of a building across the street. An art museum, if King recalled. He stared, incredulous. On top of the museum stood a young girl and a boy, both blonde. The boy was manning a long rifle on a bipod. The only thing visible in the picture was his top and he wore a black shirt or sweater. He was peering over the scope of the rifle, the way a sniper might after having just taken a shot. The rifle had a distinctive stock and large scope. Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova, better known as the Dragunov SVD sniper rifle. King had fired several and they were nice pieces of work, even if he preferred bolt-action rifles for sniping.

The girl had long, blonde hair tied back in pigtails. Her skin was a shade or two darker than the boy's, but not so dark as Queen's. She was wearing a white shirt under a black overcoat and brown gloves. The rifle she was firing looked like a fully automatic battle rifle, maybe an FN FAL or an H&K G3. There was even a SIG rifle that kinda looked like those. It was hard to tell from this distance and the muzzle flash in the picture didn't help.

The next shot was a close-up of the two on the roof. The sniper was a girl with short blonde hair, not a boy, but she was so young it was easy not to notice at such a distance. In this shot they looked like they were exchanging words. The last shot was a view of the carnage on the ground.

King picked out the pictures that interested him the most, ignoring the pain in his right hand. He looked through them again, set them all next to each other and compared them. There was no doubt about it. The girl sniper had killed the senator while the mafia thugs had served as a distraction. In fact, the fire from the scorpions had mostly just torn up the crowd around the senator, leaving him and his guards unscathed. And the clincher was the eighth picture. In that one his family was alive, huddled on the ground taking cover behind a parked car. Taking cover from the hitmen who had run down the street, but they were totally vulnerable to the two on the roof. His sister could be seen in that picture looking up at something. Like something on top of the museum...

In the next few pictures the girl in pigtails could be seen firing and in the last picture his family was dead. Not dead... just shot. His sister was lying on the ground, but he knew she wasn't dead in that picture. If only...

He looked back at the close-up of the girls. They couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen years old, so what were they doing firing military-grade weapons? It made absolutely no sense and only posed more questions. Just the same, King had his killer. He looked again at her young face and blonde pigtails, memorized every feature... and swore revenge.

**Next:** _Effective Teacher_

**Author's Note:**And finally a doll gets an appearance, even if it is only on film. What? You thought the SWA only killed the evil and wicked?


	7. Strength

**Strength from Pain**

Tara read over her most recent accomplishment, looking for some flaw or mistake. She always did this because she was such a perfectionist. Mistakes weren't allowed. Mistakes were unprofessional and in this, at least, Tara was very professional. _This and killing people._ The thought made her frown.She didn't like to kill people but a girl does what she has to do.

Satisfied, she set the pencil down, picked up the cat on her lap and rubbed her face all over his soft fur. The cat's only protest was a squeaky cat-noise of surprise at being suddenly hauled off the comfort of a warm lap. She positioned the cat so his forepaws rested on her desk while his hindquarters sat on her lap and asked, "What do you think, Caoilte? Do you like it?"

The only reply was a resumption of the soft purring which had been interrupted by sudden motion. The cat, Caoilte, paid no attention to the mess of scribbles covering the papers in front of him at all, but his tail flicked a few times. "Oh, you kitties make for such a harsh audience, you know that?" she said, setting the feline on the floor.

Caoilte, a well-groomed Himalayan, stood on four paws and regarded her unhappily, tail held high. Tara took no note, collecting her work into a stack and then stretching luxuriously. The cat, sensing no immediately forthcoming affection, padded away to groom himself in a corner of the room.

The room in question was quite large by most standards, containing a bed, large bookcase and the sort of desk on which an artist or cartoonist might ply her trade. It also contained two cats, Caoilte and a striped, long-haired Scottish Fold who was busily engaged in some sort of cat dream on the bed. There were varied and sundry consumer electronics as well, a TV, a stereo, a laptop charging on the floor. Against a wall lined by windows a dresser sat, and it was to this the cats often gravitated to survey their domain from a height. Tara snatched a hairbrush from it to engage in some of her own grooming.

In the quiet aftermath of an assignment her hair was down, a reddish-orange cascade which fell past her shoulder blades. Her nails were pink today though they had been a deep blue yesterday. She just hadn't been feeling the blue today, so she had stripped and repainted them pink while her cats frowned at her from across the room. They didn't like the smell of nail polish and Tara didn't either, but she liked the way it looked on her.

She was dressed lazily, too. Beige capris and a white tank top were the extent of her wardrobe today. She wasn't feeling too flashy and besides, she wanted to try and cheer Ace up so she wanted to look informal.

For as much as she didn't really get along with the girl she couldn't condone what had happened yesterday. Evidently, while she had been running with Joker, King had been beating Ace's head in. She had no idea what had really happened, and neither of them were really talking about it. Even if King had some sort of issue with anger-management he certainly shouldn't be taking it out on Ace while sparring. Not that she was sexist or anything, but sometimes men — the entire gender — disgusted her.

She collected her papers and slipped through the door into the hallway, pausing only to offer a farewell to her cats, "Be back soon, kittens." Caoilte looked up from his grooming, tail still held between his paws while the other, Ossian, slept on, oblivious to the commotion.

Tara made her way to the infirmary where Ace was resting. The compound which housed them was fairly large, having a dormitory, shooting ranges, gymnasium and cafeteria. She had no idea to what purpose it had been put before as it was too small to house many people and too large to have been converted from something else.

The halls were mostly empty as she wandered. There were a few support staff, mostly doctors involved with the science and doctor-stuff that had to do with their bodies and the people who worked for them. Dr. McAllister and Dr. Nori both worked here and she liked them quite a bit. Dr. McAllister was a pleasant American woman who was both very pretty and very smart. The only one who knew more than her about the artificial stuff that went into their bodies was Dr. Nori. He was a nice-looking Italian man who was rather aloof. Maybe he had a lot to think about with all the doctor-things he had to do, but Tara figured there was more to it than that.

As she glided down the hallway she wondered if Ace would like what she'd written. The girl was weird and hard to read and she said the strangest things, but Tara had always noted that she took pains to be polite so she was sure Ace would compliment her work. Even so, she hoped the other girl really did like it.

Another turn and she was almost there. There didn't appear to be any nurses or doctors around tonight. That made sense since really the only thing Ace needed to do was rest and heal on her own. Nurses couldn't help much with that. But the poor girl had had her jaw broken which severely limited the amount of eating she could do.

_Mmmm... eating_. The thought made Tara terribly conscious of the fact that she needed to get around to some snacking after this visit. She was in the mood for something salty, so maybe popcorn would do the trick. But she liked cheesy, so maybe she would go with corn chips instead. These thoughts filtered through her head as she walked by the room where Ace sat in a hospital bed reading a book.

The room had two walls that were half glass, making it easy to see in and out. The girl paid no attention as Tara walked around to the door and let herself in. She was reading something covered in the flowing glyphs that Tara had come to learn was oriental writing.

"Is this a bad time? Am I interrupting something?" she asked, holding the gift behind her. Ace set the book down on her lap and looked her way. She looked bad. Terrible, in fact. There was still a good deal of bruising all over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose had gauze or something on it. Her eyes betrayed nothing of how she felt, though.

Ace shook her head but said nothing. With the broken jaw she was really not supposed to be speaking, either, but the doctors, in their wisdom, had given her a notepad and a pen so she could write out words.

She sat down in one of the chairs conveniently placed close to the bed and set her stack of papers on her lap. "I was going to visit yesterday but Dr. McAllister said you were sleeping most of the day." Ace's response was a nod. "How're you feeling?" The question prompted a shrug. It was mostly rhetorical anyway. How well could she be expected to feel considering the situation?

"Dr. McAllister said it should only be a few more days until you're all good to go." Again a nod. "Sitting around like this must suck, though. I always hate recovering from surgery. I'm too restless, I guess." Again a shrug, then Ace held up her book. "Yeah, I like to read. And write and draw." The book was a hardcover and the jacket was nowhere in sight. Since Tara couldn't read the title she had no idea at all what it was about. It could be a field manual on guns or a torrid romance.

"I made this for you," she said, suddenly nervous. She thrust the collection of drawings at Ace who took them, surprised. "I wanted to make something to cheer you up and I had a story in my head that needed to get out, so I started drafting that last night and just finished it before I came here."

Ace looked over the first page. The six pages were a very well-drawn comic with four panels per page, sketched in pencil and written in Italian. It told the story of a girl whose cat, in addition to being terribly cute, could turn into a super-ass-kicking-kitty-of-doom to fight criminals and evil-doers. The first page was a good mixture of silly and cute in about equal parts. Even though it was a rough thing done in pencil, the considerable skill of the artist shone through.

Tara was certain she saw the other girl smile briefly — which was quite the surprise from the girl who never smiled. Ace looked over at her and said, "_Arigato_." Tara thought that meant 'thank you,' but she wasn't very good with languages that weren't European. And German. She was bad with German. More importantly, it meant that Ace had liked it enough to say something which said a lot considering that the girl wasn't supposed to be speaking.

Tara tried to suppress her smile but it leaked out just the same. "I'm just glad you like it, because I didn't know whether you'd think it was corny or cheesy or something." Ace made a noise of disagreement. She didn't think it was corny at all.

Having said what she had come to say, Tara stood, ready to take her leave. "Well, I just wanted to give you that to cheer you up while you're stuck here doing nothing. I think I heard Joker say something about another assignment once you're all healed up, so take your time," she said with a smile.

A thought tugged at her until she gave it voice, scowling as she did so, "I can't believe King would do something like that, what a bastard!" It had been on her mind all day. Ace merely shrugged. Tara felt that the girl should feel more outrage. After all she was the one sitting in the bed with a broken nose and jaw, but she didn't seem to. Creepy girl.

Tara sighed. She never would understand Ace, but that never stopped her from trying. "Well, I'll see you later," she said, reaching for the door. Ace nodded dismissal, then turned back to reading her newest acquisition.

The door closed behind her and Tara slipped down the hallway, ecstatic that Ace had liked her work. She was sure she had, since she had even smiled and everything. Her joy quickly took a back seat to irritation as she saw King hobbling down the hall headed towards her on crutches. He nodded at her as they passed, oblivious to her cold glare.

She paused, out of sight of Ace's room for just a few seconds. She heard the door open and his voice. Going to visit her, no doubt. _It's the least he could do_, she thought to herself as she continued down the hall.

Short minutes later Tara found herself in the kitchen, sorting through the snack selection with renewed vigor. Their facility maintained on-site kitchen staff who prepared all sorts of tasty dishes for the day workers, but they had left several hours ago. One of the more interesting bits of trivia concerning her new body was that it required lots of food. Dr. Nori had explained the reasoning to her but it had been all technical and she hadn't paid enough attention. The short of it was that she constantly had tummy-rumbles and never even thought about counting calories anymore. Seven or eight years ago she would have thought it the best thing to eat whatever she wanted and not care about the consequences. The reality was less appetizing; she was always hungry.

_Today would be a good day for popcorn_, she thought to herself as she tossed a bag of unpopped kernels in the microwave. With Ace resting in the infirmary, Joker out on the town and King doing... whatever it was he did, she practically had the place to herself. Not that 'the place' was anything special. She wasn't in the mood to go shooting or run laps so she plopped down on a soft couch in the area next to the kitchen that served as a rec room of sorts. It had a television that she could zone out in front of. Her room did, as well, but she didn't really feel like being in her room right now.

She surfed the channels while she munched popcorn, pausing occasionally at anything that looked promising. There wasn't much on, though, so she surfed restlessly. She finally stopped on a channel with some sort of travel show depicting Ireland. As much as Tara loved Italy, she still got homesick every now and again and watching shots of the Irish countryside was strangely comforting.

A whistle came from behind her, followed by, "Who doesn't love red-haired women?" Joker stood over the couch, eyes focused on the TV show which happened to feature a pretty red-haired girl speaking about the virtues of her homeland. He looked down at Tara and smiled.

"What happened? I thought you were going out," she said, munching idly.

"Meh. It's complicated," he replied, sniffing. "Mmmm... popcorn." He made his way to the kitchen, and pulled a bunch of red grapes out of the refrigerator.

Indeed, Joker was dressed in his late-night finery. He wore black pants with a gray polo shirt and black socks. A thin gold chain hung around his neck and a silver bracelet encircled his left wrist. He smelled strongly of cologne and hair gel, but Tara figured that had more to do with her keen sense of smell than his liberal application of the stuff.

"Complicated like you got stood up?" she asked with a smirk. Joker thought he was God's gift to women so the idea of another woman rebuffing his advances carried a certain appeal. Tara herself turned him down often enough.

"Kind of," he said, talking around a grape. He had come back into the rec area and chose a comfy chair to lounge in while talking at her. "You remember that girl I was talking about, Donata?" She nodded. She didn't really. Joker was always going on about one girl or another and without ever having met any of them she couldn't really keep all the names straight. "I was supposed to go out with her tonight but then this girl Rachele called me—"

"So you broke your plans with the one girl to go out with the second?" she asked with a frown.

"Yeah. Except Rachele called back to say that something had come up and she couldn't make it."

"Serves you right." Joker only shrugged at that and chewed on a grape. After a moment of thinking she asked, "Why not call that Donata girl, then?"

"I only call her when I've got nothing better to do."

"You're horrible," she said, throwing popcorn at him.

He shrugged and said, "She wants more than I'm willing to give. And if she thought I was horrible she wouldn't call so much." He gave her a smug grin before popping another grape into his mouth. Tara only frowned. _Poor girl_, she thought.

After a minute of silence he asked, "You mind checking if there's a game on?"

He meant football. The guy couldn't get enough of it. She tossed the remote to him. He flipped through channels at a rapid pace, pausing on a game in progress to give a short comment before moving to the next. In short order he had exhausted all the possibilities and flipped back to the travel program with a sigh.

The sound of King's hobbling came from behind her. Joker looked up, beamed and said, "Hey, gimp! How's the leg?"

"I should be walking tomorrow or the day after. Expect an assignment two or three days following that." His voice moved towards the kitchen as he spoke and finally he came into view. He paused a minute while Tara glared at him. Still focusing on Joker he said, "Vincenzo told you no live steel tomorrow?"

King's leg was wrapped in a white bandage from knee to ankle and he balanced on one leg while resting some of his weight on the crutches he carried. He wore a simple tee-shirt and faded, cutoff camouflage fatigues.

"Yeah. I'll probably sleep in then. Maybe I can get Tara to help with that," he said, flashing a smile her way. She responded by throwing more popcorn at him.

'Live steel' was a fancy term for 'fighting with knives.' Like with sparring, there was no protective gear involved. Every now and again someone got slashed, but they were quick to heal and no one had been severely injured yet. That didn't make the cuts hurt any less but — as Tara well knew — pain was an effective teacher.

Vincenzo was their supervisor, so to speak. He was the one who had assignments for them. Often enough this was killing people, but once they had been protecting a journalist and once she had gotten to steal something. Either way the team was under his direction and if he said, 'no live steel,' then there would be no knife fighting until he cleared it. That also likely meant that they would be out in the field soon. Sparring and live steel were always called off a few days before an op to avoid delays resulting from injuries.

King had grabbed a bag of corn chips from the kitchen and, crutches in one hand, hopped to the seat opposite Joker. Opening the bag, he began to crunch contentedly. Tara glared at him more but he wasn't paying attention.

"Would you mind turning the news on?" he inquired of Joker. Wordlessly, the big man flipped to a news channel.

"No, I meant satellite news." Joker looked at him and threw the remote to him. Tara continued to glare.

King pressed some buttons and the screen turned blue as he navigated some menus.

In short order he had switched the channel to an English language news broadcast. Tara's breath caught. "The Beeb!" she exclaimed in English, forgetting all about King.

"You didn't realize we could get satellite channels here?" he asked.

"No," she replied, absently. The sound of British anchors from the British Broadcasting Corporation was another relic of her childhood.

"I prefer the BBC to most of the local Italian channels when it comes to news. The Beeb covers some things that the local stations... miss. And yes," he said to Joker, whose thoughts were plain to read, "the satellite airwaves runneth over with sports channels." The Syrian smiled.

Tara remembered she was supposed to be angry with King. She frowned at him. He looked inquisitively at her. She opened her mouth to chastise him, but he looked away. The news had caught his attention. He upped the volume.

"...Senator Matteo Dini was confirmed dead two days ago. His death was ruled to have been of natural causes..."

"Heh," King said with a wry smile on his face, "There's nothing natural about a knife to the back of the head."

There was silence from his comrades as they brooded. The news program continued, "...Senator Dini was a key force in maintaining the cohesion of the coalition of political parties..."

Joker gestured at the screen, "So you mean..." Whether the words had failed him or he didn't want to utter what was on his mind, Tara could only guess, but she was starting to understand. The man pictured on the TV screen was squat and round with a clean-shaven face and hair that was bald on top and thinning on the sides. There was something about his eyes that Tara didn't trust, though.

"Yeah," King replied to Joker's unspoken question. "Ace killed him on the last op."

The newsman droned on in his quaint British accent while the watchers pondered, "...death has come at a bad time for the leading coalition who expect to announce a successor..."

"I thought the target was a... child molester," she practically spat the last two words. Such things didn't sit well with her. She was glad that Ace had done the deed, but the details of how it had happened... Tara suppressed a shudder.

"Obviously he was or Vinny's plan wouldn't have worked so well," commented Joker.

"But that's not the sort of thing you're going to see on the news," King added.

"...Senator Dini will be missed by many. He was 62. In other news..."

The room was quiet except for the sound from the TV and the crunch of corn chips. She remembered that she was supposed to be angry with King and glared at him again. Joker's eyes flicked to her, then to King, then back to her again.

"Something on your mind?" he asked, without looking at her.

"Did you apologize to Ace?" she demanded.

"No."

"After what you did you didn't even apo—"

"Didn't she break your nose once?" he interrupted. His voice was soft, quite at odds with her sudden flash of anger.

She had, but it wasn't the sort of thing Tara liked to think about. The question caught her off guard, but the memory came back full force.

**------------------------------------------------**

It had been in the early days when they had just gotten accustomed to the easy things like running and jumping. Having your body replaced is strange at first... things don't work the way you remember them working. Sometimes you could end up overdoing something. Like not knowing your own strength.

Once most of the kinks had been worked out, Vincenzo insisted that they be made ready for combat. Tara had never really fought before. She'd never had to, not with anything more than words. King and Joker were ex-military so they tried to teach her some basic sparring techniques, but she was slow to learn. Part of it was reluctance to fight. A ghost with a knife doesn't need to fight, but everyone agreed that there would come a time when she couldn't sneak up on a target or that there would be too many enemies at once. She would have to fight, then.

After she'd spent some time boxing with the boys, the training rotation had brought her around to face Ace. That day had changed her entirely.

They had met in the sparring room in the gym after breakfast, Tara in sweatpants and a tank top, Ace in sweatpants and a bra. Tara had even made a quip about their pants (they both wore blue), but Ace had neither smiled nor spoken.

Hands taped and ready to begin Tara had said, "Go easy on me, I'm not very good at this." The other girl said nothing.

They danced. Ace's movements were jerky, but quick. Tara's were more fluid and graceful, but fluid and graceful didn't win fights. Tara was good at getting out of the way and she blocked a few punches here and there but she was reluctant to hit back. She really didn't want to hurt anyone. Ace had caught on right away.

"You don't strike back because you don't want to hurt me," she had said as they caught their breath.

Tara had said nothing. She wasn't going to lie about it. Ace adjusted her style, became more reckless. She left herself open, comfortable in the fact that the holes in her defense would be unexploited. Doing this had committed her more fully to an assault which manifested as a flurry of blows around Tara's head. The redhead hid her face behind her hands and left her torso open. Ace had pounded her in the gut and the chest, then backed off.

The gut shot had winded her and the chest hit had landed on her left breast. She cradled the squooshed boob as she caught her breath and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to beat this girl to within an inch of her life.

"The guys go too easy on you, Queen. They don't want to hurt you because you're so cute. I'm not like that."

Tara stood up and brought her guard up. _Bitch_, she had thought. _If this is what you want then come and get it_.

Ace closed in again and Tara fought with newfound strength. She followed sidesteps with punches. She stopped being content with waiting on Ace; she wanted to hurt something, and that something was a little Japanese girl bobbing and weaving in front of her.

Ace had lost her footing and stumbled after an exchange of blows and had caught herself before falling. Tara moved in to exploit the other girl's mistake, but it had been a feint. Ace had danced to the left of Tara's right hook and landed a punch square in Tara's face.

Suddenly Tara's world exploded in pain and she couldn't breath. Her head had snapped back and she fought for balance. She remembered a hand on her chest, pushing her forward while she tripped over something behind her. Then all she could see was the lights in the ceiling and her back was on the mat.

Ace had jumped on top of her, straddling Tara's belly, pinning her hands to the mat and looking at her with those cold, dark eyes. As she lie there, hair and clothes plastered to her sweaty body, the taste of blood in the back of her throat, she had shivered, as if a chill autumn wind had whipped by.

"We're going to fight," the other girl began, "we're going to die. I'm not going to 'go easy' on you because if I do you'll never get any better. And if you ever let an opponent get this close to you you'll be lucky if the only thing he sticks in you is a blade." With that, Ace got up and walked out. Tara had waited to hear the sound of receding footsteps before rolling over on her side and sobbing.

For a while afterwards she had wanted to just walk out. The worst of her physical injuries was the broken nose, but the real trauma had been what Ace had said. King had been concerned for what that would mean for them as a team while Joker had really been worried about her. It was probably the only time he hadn't flirted with her. Dr. Nori had known the right thing to say though. "Don't give up on yourself, Tara. You can do this if you try, you just have to want to try."

But she didn't. Want to try, that is. She wanted to be done with this, to give up and go home. Even so, she forced herself to stay. It was the hardest thing she had ever done.

From then on she had reined in her emotions any time they had threatened to overwhelm her by thinking of that day. When training, when killing, when in danger, Queen had learned to focus herself and her thoughts. Her mind needed to be clear and as calm as still water. She had never failed in anything she had tried since.

**------------------------------------------------**

The reminiscence had taken some time and her silence evidently bothered Joker. He had eaten the last of his grapes and was looking at her. "You alright, Tara?"

"Right as rain," she said. Joker looked somewhat confused. He must have found the sudden calm in her voice more disconcerting than the sudden anger of a minute or two ago. King paid them no heed, methodically stuffing corn chips in his mouth.

After a moment Tara said, almost to herself, "I wonder if she learned anything. I wonder if it was worth it." The crunching had stopped as she'd spoken, but it resumed when she was done. Joker continued to look puzzled but said nothing.

She stood, offered words of parting and left. The hallway was cold as she made her way back, but she didn't shiver or shrink from it. As she stood on the threshold to her warm, cozy room with her cats and her things she pondered the Japanese girl, again. She was certain Ace had learned something from that experience, she just wondered what it was. After all, pain _was_ an effective teacher.

**Next:** _Section One_


	8. For the Best

**For the Best**

Try as he might, Joker just couldn't get back to sleep. That was usually the way it worked. Once he was awake, he stayed that way. There was nothing for it. It was time to get out of bed. But he didn't. Not yet. He yawned loudly and stretched mightily, but still just kinda lounged around, being lazy for a few minutes more.

It was just 7:30 or so, and it would probably be a nice day. He didn't actually have anything to do today. Live steel had been cancelled and range practice would have to be before or after their briefing this afternoon. He'd call some friends of his and see if he could find enough guys to play football. That would be a great idea.

He just had to remember to try not to be so badass on the field. A week or two ago, he'd kicked the ball and the goalie had blocked it with his torso. He missed the goal, but the poor guy who had blocked the shot called for a timeout to catch his breath. By the way the guy had moved it was obvious he was in some discomfort, but he had gotten over it in short order. Joker really had to try and remember some times not to exert his full strength except when necessary.

He rolled himself out of bed, stretched again and wandered off to make himself ready for the new day. All through his shower his stomach made unhappy noises at him, demanding food. That's usually what woke him up: hunger. He sometimes wondered how well Tara took that. If she munched, then felt all guilty. He always thought of her as one of those obsessive calorie-counters who would immediately rush to weigh herself if you implied that she was getting a bit thicker in the hips.

In due course he made his way to what served as their dining area. It wasn't really a mess hall or cafeteria by any stretch of the imagination. It was a lot more like a private, little restaurant. Tara was sitting with Dr. McAllister, talking about this and that over breakfast. King was enjoying his breakfast by himself, reading. His crutches had been abandoned a few days prior. A few other doctors and techs were around, but no one else of import.

Tara smiled and waved when she saw him. He smiled back at her and Dr. McAllister and went in search of food. He was in a mood for something sweet to go with his coffee, so he selected a croissant and a baguette slice, fruit jam and a small pile of pomegranate seeds. Someone else evidently liked pomegranates, so the kitchen staff often sliced a few open and piled the seeds in a bowl for general consumption.

When he arrived at the table, the two women were giggling like little girls. He arched an eyebrow inquisitively. They laughed harder as Tara shook her head. He was certain the joke must have concerned him, so he ate his breakfast in silence, doing his best to look hurt. He was good at that. He'd had plenty of practice. Tara took pity, and that pity took voice, "Awww... we were just making fun of you. Don't look so hurt."

"Anything interesting?" he asked.

"Nothing that bears repeating," Dr, McAllister said. Her expression was composed, but her eyes still smiled. Dr. McAllister was Dr. Nori's assistant, one of the few who understood most everything about their artificial bodies and how they worked. She was a pretty Caucasian woman in her mid-thirties, with brown eyes and sandy, blonde hair. She wore glasses and a white lab coat most everywhere within the compound, even to breakfast. A rather conservative, black blouse and skirt, worn under the coat, completed her wardrobe today. A small plate sat in front of her, containing only the few crumbs that had fallen off of whatever pastry she'd eaten. Her slender fingers curved around her coffee cup. Those fingers were never decorated by rings, Joker had been quick to notice.

Tara was wearing blue flannel pants and a T-shirt with some sort of cute, cartoon characters on it. Joker wondered for a minute what a Powerpuff Girl was, but didn't care enough to ask. In proper English fashion, Tara's breakfast consisted of poached eggs, rashers of bacon, toast with butter and jam, and some sort of sausage. It was about half gone, though.

"Wanna go for a run after breakfast?" Tara asked, tactfully changing the topic.

"Sure. Any idea when the briefing is?" he asked, working his jam onto his own breakfast breads.

"Afternoon, maybe." She shrugged.

"Killing more bad guys soon?" Dr. McAllister asked.

"More than likely," Joker responded around a mouthful of croissant. "The country's full of them. We even made the news last time."

"Oh?"

"That's what our fearless leader said," the big man said, jerking a thumb in King's direction. "Senator Dini, was it?" he asked of Tara. She nodded, her mouth full of the last of her eggs.

"Oh. Then those photos weren't fake," Dr. McAllister said. Seeing the unspoken questions on the faces of her companions she elaborated, "Some photos showed up on the Internet recently, supposedly shots of Senator Dini where he was killed. The official news version was a heart attack, but the Web site claims that he was assassinated while engaging in his 'sinful exploits.' The photos are pretty disgusting. They show a man who looks somewhat like him, except for the nakedness and the knife wound."

"Could we _not_ talk about this now?" Tara asked, experiencing a sudden loss of appetite.

"Sorry," Dr. McAllister said.

Joker had never been the sort of guy to pass up an opening, especially if it had to do with Tara. He smiled at her. "Naked, dead senator you say? Sounds delicious!" He popped a few seeds in his mouth to accentuate the words.

The redhead set her fork down and frowned at him. A moment passed. "I gotta find out who their baker is here," he said, eyeing the last half of his baguette. "He's very talented." With that he stuffed the rest in his mouth and chewed contentedly.

"I should get to the lab and look over some data for Dr. Nori. If you'll excuse me," Dr. McAllister said, rising.

"That's probably for the best," Tara agreed, "I think I've had enough of this for one day." She began stacking plates one on top of another to clear them.

"So, are we still on for that run?" he asked. Her only answer was to scowl and walk off, dishes in hand.

------------------------------------------------

As promised, the day was warm and sunny with a slight breeze. Cumulus clouds floated by lazily, all white and fluffy. Joker had called the guys and had managed to organize something for later in the day. He had confirmed the briefing time with King: it was after lunch at one. He'd probably be able to get his game on by three or so. It was shaping up to be a great day.

He did a few warm-up stretches as he readied himself for some jogging. He wore a simple pair of shorts and a tee-shirt, both dark green. He favored colors like green and brown but rarely wore them, except in a casual setting. His shoes were black and well worn, though. They were made for running and that's just what he intended to do today. The doctors had never been too explicit about whether stretching was important for their artificial muscles, but old habits die hard, so he went though the same stretching routine he'd been doing for years.

He figured she would show up, despite walking away from breakfast in a huff. He was right. As he stretched out next to the beaten-earth track they used for their jogs, Queen stepped out of the dorm and walked towards him at an unhurried pace. She was wearing pink shorts and a matching top with running shoes that were white and pink. She carried a blue towel and a water bottle which she set on a nearby bench next to Joker's own bottle and towel.

"Couldn't resist gettin' all sweaty with me, huh?" he asked as he held a stretch.

She laughed as she started her own stretches. "If I wanted good company I would've stayed in my room."

He smiled. The retort was too easy. "Yeah. I would've stayed in your room, too."

She smiled and shook her head. Once they were properly limber he asked, "You all ready for this?"

"We'd better start soon. I think I'm getting hungry again."

After a bout of laughter, they grabbed their water and towels and started off. They jogged slowly, at first, Joker matching his pace to hers. As they warmed up the pace quickened. They ran in silence the first few minutes, until they reached the fork.

The track they followed was actually three different tracks which overlapped each other for four kilometers at the point closest to the compound. To Joker's surprise, Tara chose the leftmost track. It was the longest and meant more than an hour of exertion. Joker didn't much mind; the simple exhilaration of making his muscles work was enough for him. He had always enjoyed exercise, whether running or playing football, and this body was crafted to be good at just such things. To his surprise, he had never once awoken with achy muscles, no matter how hard he had worked himself.

After another few minutes he finally struck up some conversation. "You went to visit Ace while she was laid up?"

She nodded.

"I thought you two didn't get along." It was a statement that was made to sound like a question.

"Why did you think that?" she asked, sending a curious look his way.

He shrugged, or the closest thing to it he was able to manage while keeping pace with her. They ran in silence for a few more minutes, until she said, "It's not like we're good friends or anything, but I don't hate her. Of course I'd go visit her when she was just sitting around with nothing to do. I always like it when people visit me."

Joker smiled at her and pointed to himself, indicating that he'd love to 'visit' her.

"People who aren't you, sweetie," she said, dryly. He slumped his shoulders forward in a pout, then straightened up again. They didn't talk for a while. Talking while jogging had a tendency to tax the lungs and they needed all the air they could get.

The trail wended its way away from rolling grasslands and into a lightly wooded area. Part of the track was forested and Joker really liked it out here. There was something about the smell of the outdoors that he really enjoyed, and a fine spring day was just the time to enjoy it.

As they jogged on, fresh forest scents filling the air around them, Tara suddenly asked, "I thought you were the one that didn't like her. Ace, I mean."

_'Had she been thinking about Ace all along?'_ he wondered to himself. Instead he tried another shrug. "I've got nothin' against her. She's good at her job and all..." But there was more than that. The girl was sorta cold in a way that really turned him off. He'd known girls like her in the past, but they had never interested him.

She picked up on it, though. "But?"

"But what?"

"She's good at her job, but...?"

Joker sighed. "She's not really the sort of person I'd invite out for drinks."

"What about King?"

Joker laughed. _Now wouldn't that be funny?_ "It sure would be interesting to get him drunk and listen to him ramble, but I doubt he'd hang with a grunt like me."

"A grunt?" she asked. He'd almost forgotten that she knew practically nothing about military life.

"Yeah. I always got the idea he was the sort of guy who didn't think too highly of enlisted men." She stared at him blankly. "I get the feeling he's kind of elitist. Y'know, too good to go drinking with a guy like me."

Recognition dawned. "Oh."

He let her ponder that for a bit, then asked, "You busy later? Wanna go out for drinks?" It was mostly a rhetorical question, like always, but he couldn't resist.

"Not tonight, thanks."

There was silence between them for another ten minutes or so. They were really starting to sweat, now, having jogged a fair distance at a good pace. Joker was certain he could go for another hour or so easily. Even so, he availed himself of his water bottle. There was nothing like a good run, a good sweat and some clear water to cool you down afterwards. _Well, there were a few things that good or better_, he thought to himself, eyeing the lean, athletic body of the redhead running with him.

"Whaddaya think we'll be doing this time out," she asked suddenly, as they ran. She was referring to the upcoming briefing.

"Killing people, probably." He said it casually. That was the best way to think about it. Just some people he'd never met and never would. Targets, marks, not really people at all.

Tara didn't think like that. She was used to thinking of everyone as a person. Her discontent was as plain on her face as in the questions she asked. She didn't accept that there were people whom they had to kill: for her, death needed justification. Secretly, it was one of the things about her that he really admired. Since he'd joined up with this outfit, a conscience was one of those luxuries he figured he could no longer afford.

Her face was scrunched and unhappy-looking, now. "It doesn't always have to be about killing," she said.

"That's true, but often enough it is. Men in power don't want to have to give up that power. So sometimes we have to use force." Joker was a realist. He admitted the necessity even if he sometimes didn't agree with the method.

"That's not always true."

"It was the last time. Should we have just nicely asked that Senator guy to stop being corrupt? 'Oh, and by the way, Senator, if you could stop fucking little girls that would be just swell.' Is that what we should have done?" She frowned at him, but said nothing.

Maybe that'd been a bit harsh. "Sorry, Tara, but things just aren't that easy, sometimes."

She was silent for a minute or two more, then said, "There should be a better way."

"There should be," he agreed. "If you find one be sure to let the rest of us know."

They ran in silence for a bit as Joker pondered what had been said. The senator had been one of the most egregious examples of corruption in politics in recent history. Besides the Prime Minister, that is. If the PRF really did represent the voice of the people, the _vox populi_, it would have been negligent to **not** kill Dini. Idly, Joker wondered if the Prime Minister himself was on their hit list. Only time would tell.

Who was he kidding? He knew practically nothing about national politics, besides what little he saw when he caught the news, that was. And if he was watching the news it was usually because he was waiting for the sports guy to come on. Even so, it was fairly common knowledge that the Prime Minister owned a controlling interest in most media networks in Italy. As King had pointed out a few nights ago, it was hard to trust what the Italian news said concerning politics. All of which merely compounded his own ignorance. He should just stick with what he knew: women, football and killing stuff.

Evidently while he had been ruminating, Tara had been busily thinking about something totally different. "You wouldn't invite Ace out for drinks? I didn't think there was a woman you wouldn't ask our for drinks," she said with a smirk.

"I've got high standards."

"Like what?"

"No fat chicks." He laughed to himself at that one. As much as he didn't like to think of himself as shallow, in some ways he really was.

Tara didn't think it was funny. She punched him lightly in the arm. "That's horrible. Remind me again why I agreed to go jogging with you?"

"Um, because you don't like Ace?"

"I don't have anything against her, you do! And she's certainly not fat, so why don't you like her?"

"You don't want to know," he said with an enigmatic smile. That part was true. Tara had strange ideas about promiscuity. She wouldn't want to hear what he had to say about their colleague. She might agree with his conclusion – or she might not – but it was one of those things she'd be better off not knowing.

"Why?"

"If I told you you'd probably punch me again. Let's just leave it at that."

That shut her up for a while. Good thing, too, because he was running out of breath. Listening to her panting beside him, she figured the same was true of her. He'd run this track enough times before that he was reasonably sure he could follow it with his eyes closed. He closed his eyes for a few minutes and listened to her heavy breathing, forming an image in his mind to accompany the sound effects. She ruined it by speaking.

"Why don't I like Ace, again?"

"You two haven't really exchanged words since that time she popped you in the nose and you wanted to leave." Had she forgotten?

"Oh!" she said, surprised. "But that was a while ago. Things change. People do, too."

"Forgive and forget, huh?"

"I didn't forget," she said, a sudden undercurrent of menace in her voice. The change in tone caught him off guard, so much so that he looked over at her. Her countenance was cold, like ice, very unlike the Tara he knew.

But just like that her features melted and she said, "But I can forgive." She looked over at him as she spoke, "I don't have anything against her, but sometimes she's kinda..." her voice trailed off as she looked for a suitable word. She finally settled on, "...creepy."

Joker said nothing for a long while. He didn't really know what to say, so nothing seemed like a good idea.

They emerged from the forested area and back onto the flat, clear grasslands. They were probably about two thirds of the way through and he had barely touched his water bottle. The sun had gotten a bit higher in the sky and its heat bore down on them. He took another drink of water and squirted some on his face to help cool things down a bit.

After a few more minutes of running, he said, "Race you to the end!"

She chuckled. "So competitive, huh?"

"Does that mean you won't race? Wuss."

"Oh, you're on! I was just commenting on you being competitive."

He smiled but said nothing. He always performed better when there was some sort of competition to be had. Not that winning or losing mattered much to him in this, he just wanted a reason to push himself.

They continued in silence. He pushed the pace a bit, but only a bit. He would wait and try sprinting the last kilometer. Another twenty some minutes went by without chatter. His water bottle was almost out and so was Tara's. She was right on his heels, pacing him, waiting to really run.

He readied himself, as they closed on the last bit of track. They passed the fork where the other two tracks rejoined the long one. He counted the paces, then took off, accelerating to a pace he thought he could sustain for the last two or three minutes.

Tara was right behind him, then right aside of him, running strongly. The terrain fairly flew by as they sucked in air and spat it back out, used. Joker's legs has been tiring before, but now they burned as he pushed himself. Tara was having the same problem from the looks of her. Her expression was one of pained determination, teeth clenched.

The finish line came into view then rushed to meet them. He heard her falter but he was too focused on keeping himself running. He put forth that last bit of extra effort and left her behind. He crossed the finish line with a strained, "Woohoo," slowed his pace and dropped to his knees, his resolve fading.

Tara was a few seconds behind him. She slowed to a walk after finishing, then collapsed next to him and rolled over on her back, trying to catch her breath. He wanted to say something, and several things jumped to mind, but he was too out of breath to do more than noisily suck in air and wait for his muscles to stop burning. Instead, he sprawled on his back and waited for his heart to slow.

After a minute or so, he'd caught his breath enough to say, "Woot! I finished first!"

In between breaths, Tara chuckled and said, "Yeah. I always figured it would happen that way, too."

Joker smiled at the compliment. Realizing what her words could be taken to mean, he looked over at her. She laughed and he laughed with her. "Good one," he said when their laughter subsided.

------------------------------------------------

After a shower and some lunch, Joker found himself in the conference room. 'Conference room' was a bit pretentious. It was really just a small room with a long table and some chairs. King and Ace were already there by the time he arrived. That was little surprise. They were the punctual type.

He greeted them and opened the windows. It was a nice day and it would be a shame not to let some of it into the room with them. That and Vinny smoked cigars, a habit of which Joker disapproved.

He took a seat at the end of the table between the other two. King was reading and Ace was staring off into space. He wondered what was on her mind today but thought better of asking. All three of them were dressed casually. Ace smiled at him as he took his seat. It was a devious little thing, that smile, but he was secretly relieved that she looked fine and fully recovered. Her hair was done up in pigtails and she actually looked really cute like that. He grinned back, then put his hands behind his head and waited.

It was a short wait. The door opened and Vinny walked in carrying his ever-present briefcase and trademark cigar. Mr. Vincenzo Garibaldi was a short man, just a bit shorter than Tara. He had dark, unkempt hair that was poofy around the sides and thinning on top. He was stocky and soft around the middle from years of easy living, but his eyes betrayed a keen intellect coupled with an acrid wit.

He usually wore a single-breasted, dark blue suit, but he had left the jacket behind today. He set the briefcase on the table and looked them over, annoyed. "Don't everyone say, 'Hi,' at once," he said.

Ace greeted him with kind words and a smile. Joker didn't. "Just waiting for you to sit down and make yourself comfortable. We didn't want to rush you."

"Heh. Like you could," was his reply. His voice was grainy and rough, a casualty of years of smoke and alcohol. Joker always thought that Vinny enjoyed their witty banter but didn't know that for sure. He often seemed annoyed at everything, but Joker figured he was a good guy despite that. Maybe 'good guy' was a little optimistic.

Vinny made a show of sitting down and rifling through some papers in his briefcase. He pulled out a manilla folder and an ashtray, then lit his cigar. As he looked thoughtfully at the lit cigar, the door opened and in walked Queen. Her hair was loose again and still slightly damp. She was wearing a pair of light blue pajamas covered in little, yellow ducklings. Joker smiled when he saw her. Sometimes it seemed that she went out of her way to be exceedingly informal, but he wasn't so sure. She was a strange enough girl that she might just have decided to herself that she really wanted to wear ducky pajamas today. She'd probably show up at the range wearing them.

Vinny looked more irritated than amused, though. "Nice of you to stop by, princess. And you're looking mighty fashionable today, might I add."

Her reply was a short, "Get fucked."

"Well, when you put it that way..." he said with a smirk as she took the seat on the other side of Ace.

She laughed mockingly at the remark, but King interjected with, "What's on the agenda today, Mr. Garabaldi?"

Just like that, Vinny became professional, jamming his cigar in his mouth and looking through some papers from the folder in front of him. "Your last assignment went off very smoothly and I'm quite impressed. Especially with you, Joker, you did a great job."

"Well, some of us are just that good naturally."

"Yeah. We should let you get shot at more often. You have a great talent for it. The ballistics guys were thrilled by the performance of the tactical armor and the bean counters approved a request to buy more, so that stuff will be standard issue from now on. If only it came with boots," he said, setting aside some papers and glaring at Queen on that last bit.

"Because getting shot in the foot is really dangerous," she said with mock severity. She had curled up on her chair to rest her chin on her knees and wrap her arms around her shins.

He ignored her comment and continued, "Now that everyone's all well again," he started, shooting an accusatory glance at King, "your next assignment will involve some good, old-fashioned, gritty combat-"

"Woohoo! I get to shoot back!"

Vinny had pulled some glossy photos from his folder and tossed them into the center of the table when Joker had finished interrupting him. "These men," he said, indicating the photos, "are your targets. They're ex-military, well-equipped and very well-trained and disciplined. Your job is to make them dead."

King had reached out and lined the three photos up, side by side. They were full color pictures, headshots of three men, each photo about the size of a sheet of paper. Two of the men were southerners, darkly complected with short, black hair and dark eyes. The third had lighter skin and blonde hair with brown eyes.

"Who are they working for now?" King asked as all four of them leaned forward to examine the faces.

"Heh. The government, of course. They're attached to the SpecOps division and work as counter-terrorists. They specialize in small unit tactics and urban warfare. They'll be operating in two squads of five men each. Expect them to have nothing heavier than 9mm SMGs, though they'll probably be wearing ballistic vests."

Joker raised his hand and said, "Oooh!" as if he were a student asking a question of a teacher. "Will there be big guns, sir?"

"Heh. Not for you." The response made him pout.

"What did they do?" Tara asked, her brow furrowed cutely.

"What don't they do? They're specialists that the government calls on when they need something done quietly. Among their other activities, they engage in assassination, search and destroy operations, beating up little, old ladies and stomping on cute puppies."

Tara frowned at him. He set his cigar in the ashtray, but before he could speak, Ace said, "It doesn't matter. The only thing they need to do is die." The two women stared at each other a minute.

Joker spoke to break the tension, "This guy," he began, picking up a photo, "is ex-_Carabinieri_. He had a great reputation. Every man has his price, and this guy would take cash, goods or services. It was actually a relief when he got promoted out of his unit because it meant the streets were safer." That part was all true. He was the sort of guy who gave his outfit a bad name and Joker had long since wanted to shove his Smith & Wesson in the guy's mouth and pull the trigger. More importantly, it was what Tara needed to hear right now.

"That guy's an angel compared to this one," King said, indicating the picture of the other dark-haired man. "Ettore Selvaggio is his name and he represents the worst of the Italian Army. He's been deployed in at least three countries and returned home each time to stand trial for crimes committed in the field. How he has managed to stay out of jail is anyone's guess."

"What was he charged with?" Tara asked.

"Murder and rape, usually."

Tara frowned and suppressed a shudder. Ace, in contrast, smirked and asked, "How does a soldier murder someone?"

"Cutting up non-combatants is generally frowned upon, even in the military."

"You serve with him?" Joker asked. Everyone else was asking questions so he threw his into the mix.

"Not directly. I was part of the jury that tried him when he returned from Afghanistan. The jury returned a majority guilty verdict. My superior vacated the verdict, offering no explanation. This man has friends in high places, but I don't know how or why. The same thing happened to him in Iraq. When he was returned from Srebrenica the jury found him not guilty."

"Maybe he didn't really do anything wrong there..." Tara started to say. She let that thought trail off when she looked at King. His face was passive, but there was a smoldering hatred just under the surface.

"Have you ever been to Srebrenica?" he asked her, his voice calm. She merely shook her head. "It's not a nice place. It would take _a lot_ for an accusation to stick in a place like that, especially in 1999, when he was accused. There's nothing good about this man."

The silence persisted for another minute or so. Vinny was the first to break it. "Now that that history lesson is out of the way, let's talk details. These men will be in the field on a search and destroy op against some of the PRF's finest."

"I thought we were Padania's finest," Joker said. He had leaned back in his chair, again.

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, you're going to gain access to the building where this is goin' down and eliminate these three men. Killing the rest of their squads isn't strictly necessary, but don't cry if they get shot up in the ensuing firefight."

"Will we be coordinating with the PRF irregulars?" King asked.

Vinny grinned and spoke with the cigar in his mouth, "No. Consider them hostile and avoid them. You're fine to return fire, but don't start anything. No one else needs to know about you." King frowned. Joker didn't, but this wasn't exactly a good idea. Getting caught in the middle of a gun battle with their own people and the bad guys wasn't the best idea Vinny had ever had.

Vinny pulled out some maps and went over the general strategy with King while Ace listened attentively. Joker picked up the third photo, the one of the blonde man, and stared at it as they talked. He looked over at Tara. She was staring at the map but her mind was elsewhere. He hoped she wasn't too troubled about this mission. Between what King and he had said she shouldn't be losing much sleep over these guys. That was for the best.

His silence was also for the best. What she didn't know about this blonde man couldn't hurt her. It was just a damn shame that Salvatore Cremachi was going to end up on the wrong side of a gun from Joker. He was a good man. He was also a staunch supporter of the government's efforts to quash the PRF.

He sighed, but no one noticed. While he sometimes didn't agree with what they did, hopefully it really was all for the best.

**Next:** _Discovered Attack_


	9. Section One

**The Hunter Becomes the Game**

Ace was on point this time out, for no other reason than she had nothing in particular to contribute. There was no masquerade this time, nothing that needed to be detonated and no Japanese to be translated so she was really just a warm body and a good shot. That was fine by her. It also meant no one was depending on her too much.

Except King.

They had gained entry to the building through an old sewer tunnel. Thankfully it was not a _new_ sewer tunnel: with their enhanced senses it had smelled bad enough and there was reason to believe it had been dry for months. Trudging through sewers which had seen recent use would have been downright foul.

Joker had complained, as was his wont. "Why can't we use the helicopter?"

Surprisingly, even Queen had known the answer to that one, "Because the army certainly wouldn't be conducting 'training operations' near a building where this government-deployed hit squad is."

The PRF evidently had some contacts in the government with access to some very sensitive information, as they had an exact time for the deployment of their targets. That time was 20:07. Mr. Garibaldi knew a surprising amount about the paramilitary organization known as Section One, much more than he had been willing to share in the prior day's briefing. It came out in little bits and pieces; things implied but left unsaid, certain answers to certain questions.

King had picked up on it, she was sure. His dark eyes appraised her after each question. Queen had been consumed by her own insipid thoughts, probably worried about her hair or something. Joker had cracked jokes, of course. But King had taken a great interest in the game of words she had played with Mr. Garibaldi. Doubtless Garibaldi himself had known what was going on, but he told her what she needed to know just the same.

From what she had learned, Section One was a paramilitary organization with little to no government oversight. They were not officially attached to any portion of the Ministry of Defense nor to the Parliament, but owed their loyalties – and their funding – to particular senators and deputies. They were professional, untraceable and blindly loyal. Strictly speaking, they were counter-terrorists, most often tasked with eradicating members of the PRF, but their job description was flexible. Why the PRF was interested in the elimination of particular soldiers instead of the wholesale slaughter of Section One had not been mentioned.

Section One was a somewhat irritating name. There was little information one could derive from a name like that. If their name had been something more useful, say, like Public Security Section Nine, one could presume that there were eight other sections attached to their department. Not that it made much difference in the long run, really, but information was a valuable thing, no matter how inconsequential it appeared at first glance. The more she understood about this Section One, the better. It was the sort of thing King understood, even if no one else on their team did. And now she certainly understood _him_ better.

She seriously had thought she was going to die there, on the floor of the sparring room. She had been mostly numb at the time, with so much adrenaline coursing through her. It had not really hurt until after the fact.

She had always thought she had a lot in common with King. She had been very wrong. There was fire underneath his quiet demeanor. She was nothing like that. There were some similarities, but plenty of differences as well. It had made her both curious and wary and she often thought about him at strange times.

They had gained entrance by blowing apart a manhole cover. Why this gutted and abandoned factory had direct access to an old sewer was not immediately apparent, but it served their purposes just the same. The PRF had been forced to flee here to avoid the legitimate authorities. Little did they know the Section One men wanted to turn this place into their tomb.

It had been strange that they were being deployed in the middle of a firefight between their own people and the government's, but secrecy was their watchword. They could not exactly let everyone who supported Northern independence know that the PRF employed a paramilitary death squad composed of enhanced super-soldiers. The fewer who knew, the better. As long as none of them got in the way.

There had been a spate of gunfire to announce the arrival of Section One. Even in the basement they could hear the shouts and shots. King had set up his laptop, speaking quickly, "Ace, I'll need you here to intercept any hostiles who manage to get down this way. Queen and Joker will move to intercept and eliminate the first squad. I'll give you directions once you reach the ground floor. Report any inconsistencies you encounter with the building layout. I don't want any surprises."

Mr. Garibaldi had supplied them with an old set of blueprints for this building, but there was no guarantee that there had been no changes. Ace acknowledged her orders and moved out. They were set up in the room closest to the exit. They would leave the same way they had arrived: through the sewers. The PRF, on the other hand, didn't seem to be aware of the sewer connection so they had no people stationed in the basement.

There were two stairwells and two elevators that provided access to the upstairs. The basement was full of old equipment that had been left when this building was abandoned. It was all bulky machinery with big buttons and dirty lights; it looked like this stuff had been collecting dust since before Ace had been born. She probably would have had trouble figuring out what it was supposed to do when it was new. Now she figured that half of it barely worked and the other half did not work at all.

She moved quickly through the downstairs. This must have been some sort of storage area for records. Most of the rooms had filing cabinets. There was an office that looked like it last saw use when the machines were new, even to the extent that it had a coffee-maker that looked to be cutting-edge 1970s technology. The floors were an ugly, gray tile that may have been some other color were it not for the three decades of dust that coated them. The walls were still recognizable as having been white. The stairways and elevators were at different ends of the building, so it would be necessary for her to patrol back and forth between them. The elevators were old, cargo elevators, the type with black, metal gates in the front instead of doors. The stairs were metal and seemed to continue upwards after the landing on the ground floor. Light was provided by flickering, fluorescent bulbs that looked ready to expire.

Mr. Garibaldi had expected that Section One would have the initial advantage, surprising the Padania men. After that, the PRF survivors would scatter and hide and the Section One squads would split to hunt them down. The odds would still favor Section One, though, as they had superior training, weaponry and blueprints to the building.

Ace's thoughts went unexpectedly to Queen. The girl had showed up to visit her, but with no common ground, they had said little. Her artistic talents were very good and the fact that she had both drawn and written the little comic was surprising. Perhaps she did have some advantages, despite her flaws. She wondered how things were going for those two.

**------------------------------------------------**

"Here?" she whispered.

Joker nodded. Strapping her weapons in securely, she crawled on top of a desk and leapt up to catch hold of a rafter. With a bit of effort, she swung into place over the doorway. The big man collected some office crap and tossed it on the desk in haphazard fashion to cover the footprints she'd left in the dust.

From here she had a great view of the room they were in as well as a slice of factory floor below, visible through a window. This room was some sort of office, with old desks and chairs and bulletin boards. It even had a quaint, old, rotary phone, the kind you see in old movies.

Tara really wanted to swipe that and take it home, but carrying around an old phone was more trouble than it would be worth, especially when there were two squads of badass, military commandos running around that they needed to kill. _They don't all need to die, just a few_, she reminded herself. _Just the important ones_.

There was another doorway in the other wall and Joker had hid himself just around a corner not twenty feet away, in a little alcove with a very old watercooler. The dust was thick in here as in the rest of the building. Tara had sneezed a lot when they had first made their way here and Joker almost as much. She would hold her breath when her prey came near, if need be; an inopportune sneeze would kill her.

Minutes passed this way. Tara's legs were just starting to ache as she crouched above the door, but she could hold herself in a spot like this for hours if necessary. King's voice came softly over the radio, a single word: "Approaching." That meant the Section One squad was close. Tara focused on her breathing as she pulled a knife with one hand and a gun with the other. There would be five of them against her, a knife and the eight rounds in her gun. With the element of surprise and Joker for backup it should work out in their favor. But plans always sound better on paper.

She could hear them, now, the sound of combat boots on metal. Outside the office, the floor was a metal catwalk. The inside was carpeted, but with the same metal grating underneath. The first man came right through the door and slammed his back against the wall, signaling the others. Tara's breath would've caught if she hadn't been holding it. Her muscles were tensed; she was ready to spring the moment someone looked up, at her hiding spot.

None did. They were dressed in fatigues with gray blotches on them: urban camo. As expected, they were wearing tactical vests and riot helmets. Each of them carried an MP5 and a sidearm. The first four moved into the room, looking behind desks for PRF members. The last man walked in backwards, covering their rear.

This would be a problem. She had wanted to take them unawares. That last guy really needed to look forward for a minute so she could get the drop on him. Somewhere up ahead, from an alcove by a watercooler, came the distinct sounds of a hammer being drawn back and a revolver's cylinder spinning into place. As one, all of them pointed their eyes and guns at the alcove. The timing was so perfect that she could've kissed him. _Not that I'd ever tell him that_, she thought, gently letting herself down onto the floor. The fifth man in the squad must've felt the shifting of weight under his boots because he started to turn around. Tara was quicker. As she moved, all hell broke loose.

She ran at the soldier, aiming her blade at the back of his neck, just below his skull. Her momentum helped drive it home and as he died he tightened his finger on the trigger, spraying 9mm rounds into a nearby wall. As that happened, she brought up the SIG and emptied the clip into the nearest baddie. Her aim had never been good, though; the first shot ricocheted off his helmet, the next few buried themselves in his vest. She dropped the pistol and cowered behind her makeshift shield as Section One tore up the body of their erstwhile comrade with gunfire.

**------------------------------------------------**

As soon as he'd heard the shots, he came around the corner, both pistols at the ready. One man was already dead and Tara was using his corpse as a shield. The others were focused on her. _Bad move, guys_, he thought as the guns went off. Joker was nowhere near as good a shot as King, but he had two guns and one of them hit really hard. The first shot from the Smith & Wesson took the frontmost guy in the back, almost knocking him off his feet. Joker scored a shot on the helmet with his H&K that knocked the guy's head back. Another shot from the big gun caught his opponent in the chin and made a mess of what was in the helmet.

By now, Tara had flung her meat-shield at one of her assailants and charged the other one with a knife, making short work of him. Joker unloaded on the other guy closest to the front, the H&K punching holes in his chest while the first two shots from the revolver knocked him off his feet. The S&W's last round went through the window. The man on the ground lay dying, but not dead. Joker covered the distance to him, stomped on the hand holding the SMG and dropped to one knee, sliding his pistol up, under the man's helmet as he did so.

The face that looked back at him registered pain and confusion. _Sorry, Sal. Nothing personal. Just business_, is what he wanted to say. Instead, he pulled the trigger.

Joker stood as Tara pinned the last man to a desk. Evidently his gun had gotten tangled with the corpse she had thrown at him. He hadn't been able to bring it to bear in time and now her blade was at his throat. She pushed the gun's strap off his shoulder and it slid to the floor, falling on a dead man.

She stood there for a bit, just looking at him, then said softly, "He's got puppy-dog eyes."

_Great. Wonderful time for her to start acting crazy_, he said to himself. Joker brought the gun up, but she moved in between them.

"Run away, little puppy. Before the bad man hurts you." Joker lowered the gun, speechless. Without a word, the man ran off, not bothering to look back.

"What the hell was that all about?" he asked. She tossed a gun at him – the man's sidearm, he realized – but avoided his gaze.

"He wasn't a threat."

"So you told him to run away after grabbing his guns? What happens when the PRF guys – the ones who don't like his eyes – find him? He'll be just as dead then."

"We can't save everyone, Rauf," she said, still staring at the floor. Her gaze met his as she finished her sentence, "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Let's go."

Joker shook his head and followed her. He tapped the radio and sent his acknowledgement of goal achieved, "Who's on first?"

King responded immediately, "Acknowledged. Head to the other side of the building." Joker copied, dumping hot brass from his revolver. _Two down, one to go_.

**------------------------------------------------**

A few minutes passed with nothing but stray gunshots to break the silence. Suddenly, the whirring noises of factory machinery filled the air upstairs. Joker and King discussed it briefly over the radio. Evidently the PRF had started the old, factory machines to provide background noise. Ace finished her rounds and passed by King's room. He glanced up, nodded to her, then focused his attention on his laptop again. She headed off towards the west stairwell, again, starting her patrol anew.

"Wait. Hold position there," came King's voice over the radio. She stopped where she was.

"What?" It was Joker. The command had probably been meant for him.

"The target has stopped moving."

"Well that's a good thing, right?"

"No. There's something wrong here."

"Your spider-sense tingling?" King ignored that last comment. Ace was not quite sure what had been said, but figured it had been a cultural reference with which she was unfamiliar. That happened often. She paused to listen.

"The target should be about a hundred feet straight ahead of you. The entire squad should be there, but they're standing close together. See if you and Queen can circle around and catch them between you, but be careful."

"Copy. We're on our toes."

Ace moved on, checking the elevator and the next set of stairs. Still no movement. That was a good thing. Sometimes, boring was best.

"Problem," Joker's voice was soft over the radio. "That squad is still all bunched up?" Ace paused and ducked behind a piece of machinery to listen to their conversation.

"Roger. They haven't moved at all. What's wrong?"

"They're on to us. It looks like they're waiting. I can only see one guy from where I am now, but he most definitely is _not_ where you say he is."

"Agreed," Queen's voice was barely a whisper in her earpiece. "I can see one man from where I am now and there's another maybe seven or eight meters away from him and farther back."

"Acknowledged. Joker, look at a point at ten o'clock or thereabouts. Do you see another man there?" King asked.

There was a pause. "Yeah," he whispered. "I can see his boots."

"With all that noise, one of you may be able to get behind that squad, especially if they're waiting to ambush you. If Joker provides a distraction, Queen should be able to eliminate the target."

Both acknowledged. If this went as planned, they would be out of here in short order, another assignment completed, flawlessly. She walked towards the other side of the building, her attention split between the radio and her surroundings. Suddenly she stopped, eyes on the stairwell. The dust at the bottom of the stairs was scuffed, bearing the marks of recent passage.

Ace stopped and dropped into a crouch, scanning the area. No one was in evidence and she could hear nothing more than machine noises. Carefully, she pressed on, watching and listening for any sign of an enemy presence. She reached a junction and still had seen nothing she had not seen several times before.

Maybe some PRF men had come down the stairs, then turned around. If there were hostiles in the area, she would rather not pin them between her and King. Ace jogged back, hoping that it was a nothing serious. Of course, if it was serious, King could be in trouble, since his attention was focused elsewhere. She did not want to look the fool by raising a false alarm, but she ran like the wind, just in case.

There were three doors in the room where King was, plus the manhole that led to the sewers. She reached it and stepped inside through the east door. He was glued to the laptop, listening to his headset. She stepped forward, into the room, intent on crossing it to get to the door in the other wall to start searching the downstairs with him behind her.

As King looked over at her, she saw a man step into the west doorway. She ran to her teammate, spraying the opposite doorway with gunfire. She paused in front of King, as he grabbed for his SMG on the floor. Gunfire sounded from behind her and the bullets tore into the armor on her back. She wrapped her arms around King's head to shield him, hissing in pain as the spray of bullets traveled the length of her back and thudded into her unarmored thigh.

The sudden pain in her leg caused her to lose her balance and she dropped to one knee. As she did so, King stood, his gun spitting lead at their other assailant. She heard a body collapse behind her. Ace tried to steady her breathing as she knelt in the settling dust, her arms still around King. She glanced up at him. He spoke softly as he held the gun between both doors, trying to cover them both.

"Get up. We can't stay here." His gun went off again. She tried to rise, but collapsed with a yelp. She tried again, leaning her weight on her good leg, clinging to him for support. As she stood, he tapped his intercom and said, "Blue light special." That was his phrase for, 'Help!' They needed it now, but the radio was ominously silent.

The sound of something bouncing off the doorframe caught King's attention and he swung the gun to cover the doorway. Whatever it was bounced again on the floor, but by that time the gun was already out of his hand and King had grabbed her – one arm around her waist and the other under her wounded thighs – and picked her up. She caught sight of what it was before the flash of pain. She screamed as the word flashed through her mind. _Grenade!_

He darted backwards, carrying her, dropping to his knees behind a pile of old machinery in a corner. He circled his arms around her head, and – realizing what he was doing – she clamped her hands over his ears just as it went off.

The blast was violent enough to bludgeon them against the wall with their own impromptu shield. Her left arm had been smashed, her whole body hurt and she could hear nothing but the ringing in her ears.

What was worse, in his haste to escape the explosion, King had run to the wrong corner. The exit into the sewers was more than ten meters away, in the opposite corner of the room. There was too much open area between the two corners for them to cross safely.

King was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, but his eyes were as fierce as ever. He wiped the blood away and pulled his Colt from its holster. Ace unholstered her own pistol and offered it to him. _Perhaps this is how it ends, instead, _she thought, unafraid. _The two of us with two guns and a battered piece of machinery for cover against our own comrades_.

Ace felt useless in this circumstance, though. She could barely stand and she was not the best shot when unwounded. She briefly considered acting as a decoy, drawing fire from the PRF men, but figured it would not work as planned. King would try to stop her and there was no way to communicate her intent to him. She should have jumped on the grenade. Maybe then one of them might have made it out alive.

He was peering through the wreckage of their cover, trying to see their assailants. He probably could not hear either. _The downside to sensitive hearing_, she figured. If the PRF had another grenade, someone would need to step into the room to throw it, and King would not miss such an easy shot.

One or two of the PRF soldiers were cautiously poking through the room. King stood and shot. His first bullet took the one right between the eyes. The second man dove back through a doorway as King dropped behind cover. Bullets impacted the piece of machinery she hid behind, causing little vibrations that she could feel through her arm. Her ears still registered nothing but ringing.

King traded shots with the PRF for a few minutes. She watched as well as she could, trying to stay alert for any other grenades, since she would not be able to hear them, but none were forthcoming.

Minutes passed in a standoff. King dropped an empty magazine and reloaded. It was hard for him to effectively fight back since their opponents were able to take cover in multiple spots while he could only fire back from the corner. As soon as one man ducked back in a doorway, another popped out in a different spot. She counted off the rounds as he fired. Soon enough the gun was empty and he grabbed hers. She pulled out the spare magazine and set it on the floor in front of him. Their eyes met. She did not hear what he said, but could just make out the words, "Not today."

Another minute went by with no sign of the PRF. King fidgeted a bit. He wanted to shoot something. The waiting was broken by the sudden appearance of a man in one of the doorways. King aimed but held his fire; the man raised his gun to fire at something in the other room when Queen crashed into him with all the force of a tidal wave.

She shouldered him in the ribs, stepping past the gun as it went off. She grabbed his arm at the wrist and elbow and said something to him. He watched in horror as she bent his arm back. By the time he thought to grab her around the head with his left, she had aimed the muzzle of his gun at his head and pulled the trigger. She did not flinch from the splatter of gore as the dead man collapsed. Instead she moved into the room, leaving the corpse in her wake.

Her gun was out by the time King had finished standing, but she lowered it as soon as she recognized him. She spoke quickly such that the words were lost to Ace. King shook his head, pointed at his ear and spoke.

She spoke more slowly, exaggerating her words. Even Ace was able to figure out that she had said, "Where's Ace?"

Painfully she got to her feet, leaning heavily on the machinery for support. Queen said nothing, but the relief on her face was plain to see. _One of the mysteries of being Queen_, Ace thought to herself, _is how quickly she can go from remorseless killer to dissolving into tears_.

Joker joined them in short order. The three talked for a little, but Ace missed most of what was said. King turned to her and motioned that it was time to go. She began to hobble forward and Joker stepped close and lifted her off her feet. Any other time, she might have thought it shameful to be carried around like a sack of rice, but she was in no mood to complain now.

She deserved no better, though. Shame was the price of failure and she had failed in a most spectacular fashion. Even so, she had survived. She was unsure whether that was a good or bad thing. Of the two, living with shame was much harder.

No one saw her tears, slung over Joker's shoulder as she was. The pain in her thigh had subsided to a dull ache; if anyone were to ask, it was pain that had brought the tears. But she knew better.

**Next:** _Blackjack_


	10. Hidden Agenda

**Author's Note**Many thanks to Person with Many Aliases for giving me ideas so I could focus my attentions elsewhere.

**Discordant Beliefs**

He'd been absolutely livid at the debriefing. A lot of the adrenaline and tension caused by fighting for one's life was gone, leaving only a smoldering fury at the circumstances. It didn't help that Garibaldi was less than complimentary.

Tara had accompanied Ace to the infirmary, leaving Joker and King with Garibaldi. Joker reported that all targets had been successfully neutralized. Neither of the other two had sustained any wounds or damaged equipment. Ace and King had taken a beating, though.

"Nice to know someone knows how to get things done," Garibaldi had said to Joker. King was still having trouble hearing, but if he concentrated on reading lips he could figure out what was being said.

"That's because your intelligence was great!" King said. "We knew everything about that Section One. Someone forgot to mention, however, that our own guys had Kalashnikovs, and they'd be shooting them at us!"

"Yeah, well, you were supposed to avoid them." Realizing how irate King was, he added, "Calm down a little. There's no need to shout so much."

"Oh, I _am_ calm. I'm not talking loud because I'm mad, but I can't hear too well. D'you know why?" King asked. "Because a fucking grenade went off not ten meters from my head!" he shouted that last part. It made him feel a little better.

Garibaldi was taken aback by the outburst. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "That's very unbecoming from someone of your station, Captain." _I'm not a captain anymore, and this isn't the army, _King thought, but kept it to himself.

"Maybe you need to take some time off to cool down a bit. We can review the situation later," Garibaldi said, looking more composed.

"What I need is a sparring partner," was the retort. Joker eyed him warily. "Instead, I'll be in the weightroom," he finished and stalked off.

**------------------------------------------------**

It had taken a few days for his hearing to become somewhat normal again. The gash on his forehead had long since healed and his elbow was fine. Ace had taken the most abuse; the 5.45 rounds had torn her thigh up badly and she'd suffered a fracture in her upper arm, but she was recovering nicely. Physically, at least. If anything, she was even more dour and terse than usual, and that was saying quite a bit.

He had been really fortunate that she had walked in when she had. It had been foolish to think that one person could've covered two sets of stairs at opposite ends of the building, but it had been even more foolish to drop his team into a three-way in a rundown building. Poor planning.

Garibaldi had been willing to concede the point, after King had apologized for his outburst the following day. It had been poorly planned but well executed, a testament to their ability to adapt to changing conditions. As much as King didn't like the sound of that he had accepted the compliment just the same.

His training schedule paired him with Joker for range practice that day and the big man had asked him out for drinks that night. A courtesy to be sure, but Joker was surprised by King's acceptance. Hell, King was almost as surprised, but he really could use a night where he just hung out, drank himself stupid and talked about nothing in particular.

So that was how he found himself relaxing in a comfortable chair at a table at a local eatery on the outskirts of Milan. Strictly speaking, there wasn't much that was local to where they were housed, but this was close enough.

Joker had picked out a table against the wall with a good view of the entrance.

"Getting paranoid in your old age?" King asked him.

"Nah, just wanted this table for the view." He indicated several other tables between them and the entrance where a variety of pretty women were seated. King smirked. Joker always seemed to have one thing on his mind. In that way, he was no different from a lot of other men King had known over his life. King himself was no prude, far from it, but neither was he the sort to spend so many waking hours worrying about getting laid.

Joker ordered a pitcher of beer and a glass. King was somewhere between bemused and irritated at that. Bemused that the big man was going to drink that much – and beer, at that – and irritated that he hadn't thought to bring a second glass.

When he said as such, Joker responded with, "Sorry, man, I didn't think you were a beer guy."

"I'm not, but it's the principle of the thing."

"You got legs, and no one's broken 'em recently," he said with an evil grin. "Why don't you walk over there and order something?" he asked, indicating the bar.

In short order, King had gone to the bar and come back with his own pitcher and two rocks glasses full of some dark liquid.

"Startin' things early?" Joker asked, eyeing the liquor.

"The drunker I am," he said, taking a seat, "the easier you are to deal with."

"You're such a sweet-talker, man."

King had no reply to that. Nothing worth saying, at least. Instead he asked, "So is this where you normally hang out?" Somehow this seemed much more sedate than he had expected from a guy like Joker.

"Uhh, no. Usually I would go out to a dance club, but I thought it would be a bad idea to take you there." King just looked at him, saying nothing. "I'm not sure whether you had noticed, but a lot of the guys at those clubs are real dicks and I figured we'd have a much nicer night if you didn't beat anyone to death."

"Nicer but less interesting, to be sure."

"Heh, yeah."

"You dance?" Joker was a breed apart from most of the rest of them when it came to fighting styles. Ace was capricious and unpredictable. When you knocked her down she came right back up. Tara's movements were fluid and graceful. King himself was one part calm patience to one part explosive violence. Joker was the immovable object. He was a great grappler, impressively strong, but he didn't move much. Joker was the sort of guy who would block a blow or take it rather than get out of the way. It seemed to King that the other guy wouldn't be much of a dancer. He imagined the big man head-bobbing and swaying to music without actually moving his feet. It brought a smile to his face.

"Do I? Oh, hell yeah! I'm horrible at it, though," he said with a grin. "A woman once told me I had two left feet and a sense of rhythm to match. Then she married me." He took a big swig of his beer and smiled wistfully.

"What about you?" he asked King.

"Dance?"

The memory came to him, unbidden. Her voice, a demure alto, taking on a higher pitch of girlish glee, 'My brother? Dance? Ha! I'd love to see that!'

"I did, once. I haven't in a while. Time changes everything, huh?"

"I'll drink to that," Joker said, raising the liquor in a toast. "To who we used to be," he said, and kicked back the drink. King did the same with his, then poured a glass of beer. Joker's face went through several expressions as he pondered what he had just drunk. "Whiskey?" he asked.

"Bourbon. Maker's Mark."

"Pretty smooth."

"Yeah. I knew a guy who loved the stuff. It's not bad."

"American?"

"Yeah. It's from Kentucky. Middle of the country, maybe."

"Heh. No, I meant your friend."

"Oh. Yeah. USMC."

"Your friend wouldn't have anything to do with you carrying that old 1911, would he?" he asked with a grin.

King shrugged and said, "I like the .45s more than the 9mms." Joker chuckled at that.

King arched an eyebrow and said, "This from the guy who uses 300 grain .454 rounds?"

Joker laughed. "I like it because it makes big boom. And those are .460s, not .454s." King took another swallow of beer, the corners of his mouth threatening a smile.

"So how'd you meet your marine friend?" Joker asked, after a pause.

"It's a long story." Actually, it wasn't, but it was also the sort of story he really did not want to revisit just now.

"We got some time."

Irritated, King said, "I'll probably get drunk and fuck up the ending, so I'd rather not."

"Fair enough."

King took a long drink, savoring the taste and the memories it called to mind. It had been a long time since he had put back some beer. Joker asked, "You want another drink? I'll see if I can get the bartender to come by once in a while. We're gonna need a lot of drinkin' if you're lookin' to get your drunk on."

"Yeah. Do that." Part of the 'upgrades' that had gone into them included some sort of 'enhanced filtration' bits, probably liver, kidneys, maybe some other internals. The bottom line was that getting drunk required lots of alcohol. When they had been told that, it had become a fun challenge to push the limits and see how much it would take to get each of them drunk. King had a good background in the sciences and kept records for the experiment. The results implied a threefold increase in alcohol capacity. It would make for an expensive night.

King watched as Joker went to the bar and ordered two vodkas, neat. He exchanged some words with the bartender and tossed some bills on the bar, then returned with the drinks.

"You drink vodka, I trust?" he asked, setting one in front of King.

"Of course. The only thing I'm not too keen on is tequila. Unless it's Patrón."

"Well, then," he said, raising his glass in toast, "here's to not drinking tequila."

"You expect a toast every time we drink?"

"Nah! Eventually I'll run out of things to say and stop caring."

That point came about half an hour and six drinks later. They made some small talk about this and that.

"Didja see? The black and reds are doing really well this year," Joker said, with characteristic animation.

"Who did what now?"

"A.C. Milan?" King only shrugged in response. "Football."

"Oh. No wonder."

"Not a fan? That's practically unpatriotic!"

"Considering our line of work," King said, gesturing with a glass, "not caring about football is the least unpatriotic thing I do."

"Heh. Yeah, there is that. Either that or we're working to make a better Italy, if you believe the bullshit you read."

"Never believe the bullshit you read."

"Were you always such a cynic, or did you learn that in the army?"

"C'mon, man, you know life isn't all fluffy puppies and rainbows." Their conversation paused a minute as the bartender came by with fresh drinks.

"Yeah… that's something that's been bugging me, lately." King arched an eyebrow but said nothing. "You meant what you said about that army guy?"

"Selvaggio?" Joker nodded. "Every bit, why?"

"Because that other guy, not the shitbag I killed, but the blonde guy? He was a good man and I'm sorry I had to be the one to end him."

"Good man? How so?"

"Nice guy. Did what he was supposed to do. Played by the rules, except when it made more sense to break 'em. He was the sort of guy you'd want to come over to your house and watch your kids when you were out for the night. Cappin' him in the head made me feel like shit. Hell, talkin' about it makes me feel like shit."

"Not a fan of the PRF, was he?" The big man shook his head, regret plain on his face. "There you go. That was his downfall."

"But why him? Plenty of guys hate on the PRF for being terrorists. What was special about him?"

King shrugged and spread his hands. "I got no answers for you. I'm not sure Vinny does, either. When I was talking to him after I settled down, I got the feeling he was kind of apologetic, like he knew it was a shitty plan, but there wasn't anything he could do."

"Yeah. Maybe. Hey, something I been meaning to ask you." King looked askance. "So that senator guy liked little girls, but what else was so bad about him?"

King shrugged again. "All I know are rumors, including his sexual preference."

"Well that part was true enough"

"Yeah, but there's also a rumor about him being killed by some hardcore fundamentalist group from the Vatican, and we know how true that is."

"Point taken," he said, pouring another beer. King pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. Joker took a swig then asked, "You smoke?"

"Only when drinking," he replied with a smile.

"Oh. So what was he _rumored_ to have done?"

"Pretty standard politician bullshit, actually," King said, ticking off offenses on his fingers, "Bribery, blackmail, tax fraud, assassination– "

"Really?" Joker interrupted.

"You remember that madam in Rome?" Joker returned a blank look. King took a drag on the cigarette and said, "Alright, so there was this controversy in Rome a few months back concerning a woman and her 'escort service.' The madam, Maria Ramos, had been implicated in a scandal involving some members of parliament. A few days later, as the media was doing its best to focus on that anti-gay rally, her body was found, cut to pieces and–"

"Raped."

"Was it on after the weather but before sports?"

"No. No, I remember that case for a totally different reason…" he said, staring off into space. King took a drink of beer and waited. Joker would explain himself in due time.

He waited until the bartender had come and gone to continue. "A friend of mine in the _Carabinieri_ had gotten a hold of the coroners' report. He had an interest in the case, but I never asked why." King exhaled, the smoke diffusing slowly in the air, while Joker stared off in the distance, remembering. "So he sent me a copy of the report and asked me what I thought it said. Usually these things are pretty straightforward. I mean, unless there's a bunch of drugs mentioned or something – and I always have to look those things up, anyway – there shouldn't be anything special in the report that he shouldn't be able to read for himself."

He paused to finish his beer and look around before continuing, "So I read through it and it mentioned nothing at all about any semen or foreign blood found on the victim. In rape cases there's usually traces of something like that, but not that time. What's even stranger, though, is that the angle of some of the stab wounds implied the attacker was shorter than the victim."

"So you're saying she was attacked by a midget?"

"What I'm saying is the details in that case don't add up. When I told my friend that, he said, 'Yeah, that's what I thought, too.' But I don't recall her being very tall and the media claimed she was attacked and raped. There was no mention that her assailant was a short guy. And he'd have to be, noticeably short that is. He'd also need to be pretty damn strong. The notes the coroner had scribbled in the margins indicated that the depth of the cuts was significant."

"Supposedly, Senator Dini was the guy who gave the order."

"But who was it who did the deed?"

King shrugged.

"Reminds me of another rumor I'd heard," Joker said, setting his beer down, his countenance devoid of humor. "There was a rumor going around in the my company that the government uses cyborgs. For black ops and whatnot. I laughed it off, then, but that was before I'd met Mr. Gray."

"Cyborgs, huh? I'd believe it. The technology is probably there," King said with a smirk.

"Yeah, well… it's creepy." Joker said, then paused as if to say more. He didn't. King exhaled a cloud of smoke that seemed to hang in the air between them.

There was an uncomfortable silence as both men pondered what had been said. After a few minutes, and some fresh drinks, Joker changed the tone of conversation and soon enough they were talking about guns and cars, and other staples of manliness.

Like women.

"You think Tara's a natural redhead?" Joker asked.

"She's from Ireland. She could be. Find some pictures of her from before and that would settle it for certain." He paused to take a drink, then finished. "No, I don't."

"I wonder if she's got red hair everywhere." King had to smile at that.

"Of all the women in the world, that girl fascinates you because she keeps saying, 'No,' huh?"

"That might have something to do with it. And she's smokin' hot, don't forget that part."

"There's always Ace. The way she flirts, I'd be willing to bet she'd put her money where her mouth is. Or something else, for that matter."

Joker was already shaking his head. "No, thanks, man. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt."

"Really? Find something you didn't like?" King had always thought that Joker was the sort of guy who would go for just about anything female.

Joker drank some beer, thoughtful. He set the glass down, shrugged and said, "She's a dead lay. It's a turn-off."

"Oh? When did you get standards?"

"There are just some things I don't like, and that's pretty high on the list. Like cover-thiefing."

"Cover-thiefing?" King asked, bemused.

"Yeah. Like, when you wake up in the middle of the night all cold and whatnot, and you look over and see the woman in your bed all wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets and covers. I hate that." King laughed, as much because it was funny as because it was true. It felt good to laugh again.

"See that girl over there?" Joker asked, gesturing with his glass. By now King was feeling pleasantly inebriated, so much so that he was even starting to enjoy Joker's company.

"How could I not? You've been staring at her since she walked in. Think she's a cover-thief?" The woman in question was shapely, with dark hair and eyes and a green dress designed to display her feminine attributes to her advantage. She was at a table with another woman, a plain-looking girl with brown hair and too much make-up.

The big man laughed. "Look, man, I don't _stare_. I'm hardly that uncouth."

"Yeah, alright. So you gonna go talk to her or just ask me about her?"

"I think I'm gonna go find out if she steals covers or not. Now I'm drunk enough to get in a fight with her boyfriend, if she has one. But I don't see one and I'm not seeing a ring, either," he said, straining to get a better look at her. "But once I go over there, her friend is gonna wanna leave, so if you're lookin' to get some of that, now's the time."

"Heh. I'll pass, thanks." He was surprised to find that he was interested, but it would be safer for everyone if he just went home alone.

"You sure?"

"I tell you what. You go hit on that one," he said, indicating the brown-haired woman, "and I'll talk to the girl in the green dress." He would do no such thing, but he wouldn't need to.

"How about let's not and tell everyone we did," Joker said, standing. King had figured as much.

As they had been talking, another man had approached the two ladies and was doing his best to ingratiate himself. Based on what little he could hear of their conversation, it wasn't working. When Joker arrived, he greeted her as if they were old friends. It worked. Desperate to get away from unwelcome attention, the girl made a show of lavishing affection on Joker and introduced him as her boyfriend. Words were exchanged. Joker acted intimidating, which was easy, considering his advantage in height and build. Thwarted, the other guy left. King had to admit, Joker was good at pushing buttons.

They talked for a bit as King finished the last of the beer and asked for the bill from the bartender. At one point, the girls looked over at him, then Joker said something and shook his head.

It only took fifteen minutes or so before they were ready to leave. Joker came by to introduce his new friends. King offered pleasantries, then made his goodbyes. It had been a really nice night, after all, much better than he had expected.

**------------------------------------------------**

By the time his taxi dropped him off, he was sober enough to walk and desperately needed some water. King had instructed the driver to drop him a mile away from home, in a rural, residential district. Part of it was paranoia – not wanting the taxi driver to know where he was going – but part of it was him just wanting to take some time to walk and clear his head.

He had done a lot of that over the last two years. Long walks were a good counterpoint to beating on a heavy bag until his knuckles were raw and his arms felt ready to fall off. He covered the distance quickly, though, walking at a rapid pace.

The dorm was quiet as he entered. The only lights on were those in Tara's room. Joker would be out all night and Ace was probably asleep. His stomach made noises demanding food.

He made his way to the kitchen that adjoined the common room. As he greedily gulped at some water, he poked around in the refrigerator for something to eat. He was in the mood for something different tonight, something he hadn't had in a while.

Soft footsteps sounded from the hall just as he had decided on a snack of bagel and orange. King had since learned to distinguish most of the people who lived and worked in the dorm by any of a number of traits. Based on her gait, he could tell Ace had come up behind him. He sliced the bagel in half on the counter, speaking to her, "Sorry if I woke you up."

"I was already awake. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping," she said.

"Nightmares?" he asked, dropping the bagel in a toaster and turning around. She was standing in the doorway, dressed in pale yellow, silk pajamas.

She shook her head. King slumped against the counter. He'd almost forgotten how pleasant a sensation inebriation could be. "You smell like alcohol and cigarettes," she said.

"I taste like it too," he said with a smile.

She ran her tongue over her lips and ran her eyes over him before saying, "I bet."

_Walked right into that_, he thought to himself. He had almost forgotten how flirtatious she could be. He was spared further banter when the bagel popped out of the toaster. Methodically, he set to work buttering it. As he did so, he asked, "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I want to apologize for my actions on our last assignment."

While he couldn't possibly figure what she thought she had done which would warrant an apology, he scooped up the bagel, orange and a napkin and moved to the couch to stare at the TV while he ate. "I thought you did well enough," he said, sitting and grabbing the remote. She followed and sat at the other end of the couch, her eyes on the screen. "Did you do something I don't know about?"

"It was my responsibility to keep the PRF men from reaching you. I failed in that. I am very sorry and I will make sure it never happens again." She sounded genuinely contrite. For a minute he was at a loss for words. It had been too much ground for her to cover and a foolish thing to expect her to do and Vinny knew it. The best thing would've been to face the Section One boys directly, or _with_ the PRF, instead of fighting them both at the same time.

"It was a stupid plan, and Vinny knew as much. You did great," he said, around mouthfuls of bagel. She didn't really sound too concerned, so he figured that was as good a thing to say as any.

"Thank you. I will do better next time."

"Vinny sets up something stupid like that again and I don't think any of us will have to worry about next time," he said in disgust.

"Ours is but to do and die," she said, her voice distant.

Having finished the bagel, he snorted derisively. "I'll ride into the Valley of Death on my own terms. There's more to life than…" he said, letting his voice trail off as he remembered the last time he'd heard those words. It was something he and his sister had often said in their youth, an admonition against living one's life with too narrow a focus. He could almost hear her in his mind, _There's more to life than revenge_.

Her voice snapped him out of his reverie. "Than what?"

"Than following orders." He said nothing else, disturbed by the recent memory. He peeled the orange and ate it, paying little attention to the horrible, old movie playing on the TV.

There was silence between them for a few minutes, then she said, "I would have expected you to value obedience."

"I did at one time," he said, stuffing the last of the orange in his mouth.

"What changed?"

"I lost some faith," he said. When he had been younger, he had always thought he had known the score. Government good, terrorists bad. Sure, growing up in Milan had colored his perceptions, but he had still been basically convinced that the government still functioned with the interests of the people at heart. He had always supposed that the question of Northern independance was mostly political and would be worked out in due time.

Working for the PRF had changed things significantly, as had his firsthand glimpses of the corruption that could be found in the organization charged with representing the people. Nothing was simple anymore and the government seemed to be more concerned with the interests of the few over the interests of the many.

Everyone had flaws, problems. Everyone cheated on their taxes and disregarded the speed limit. But there was a lot more than simple misdemeanors going on here. It was the sort of thing that needed to be puzzled out over long walks, not discussed while in a drunken stupor.

"How– "

"I think I'm gonna get some rest, I'm kinda tired, what with my big night out," he said, standing. He really was in no mood to discuss this right now.

"As should I. I am sorry if I have bothered you."

"Nah, that's not it at all." These thoughts had been nagging him since his walk; her questions had just brought them into focus.

He discarded his orange peels and made his way to his room. She followed, saying nothing. All four of them roomed in close proximity to each other such that her quarters were just past his.

Something nagged at him, beyond the moral ambiguity of working for revolutionaries to force change in the government. Something related to the girl pacing him. Had she really wanted nothing more than to apologize?

When he arrived, he opened the door to his room and paused as she started to speak. As she wished him a good and restful night, an idea popped into his head. The words were out almost before he could stop himself, "You wanna come in?"

She hesitated a moment, but that was answer enough. He moved into the room and she followed, closing the door behind her.

**Next:** _Like Sisters_


	11. Heartbroken

**Affliction of the Heart**

A mighty yawn heralded her wakening. The cats shifted slightly at her sudden movement. She listened for the outside sounds that accompanied the mornings here at their home in the dormitory. If she closed her eyes and imagined, it was almost like being at some sort of boarding school, even if Tara was a bit old to be sent away to school.

She did her best to reach under her pillow without disturbing the cat sprawled on her belly. Ossian loved to sleep _on_ her which sometimes led to complications. If she rolled over in her sleep she would inadvertently squish him and the time or two it had happened he had been wary of her for the next few days, despite her apologies.

Caoilte, on the other hand, liked to sleep next to her head, some sort of reminder that she was his human, much to the consternation of several boyfriends she had known.

She caught the item she wanted and pulled it from its hiding spot. She ejected the clip and pulled the slide back to pop the round out of the chamber. Last night, as she was drifting off to sleep, Tara had been certain she had heard Ace cry out. Suddenly awake, she had grabbed a pistol and a blade and waited silently, listening for any other sounds. She had thought that one of her worst fears had been realized: the government had found them out and sent soldiers to deal with them.

But as she lie awake in the dark, waiting and listening for the sounds of gunfire or boots on hardwood, she became unsure whether it had been Ace she had heard. Then she wasn't sure whether it was a woman she had heard, it could have been a bird or cat outside. Then she wasn't sure she'd heard anything. Then she fell asleep.

She must've believed so at the time, however, as she had loaded her gun and stuffed it under her pillow. She sighed heavily. It was almost hard to remember a night when she could blissfully sleep the night away. Her days were full of blood, steel and adrenaline; her nights were full of worries. What she really needed was a day off, a day to just relax.

_Yeah, right. A vacation? From here?_ It's not like they didn't have spare time aplenty: Joker spent his playing football, and cruising bars to take advantage of impressionable women; Ace did a lot of reading; King also read, as well as doing things on the internet; and Tara liked to sing, dance, draw and pretend she was a normal girl again. But she didn't want more spare time, she just wanted to take a day off from the PRF.

Ossian, feeling her stir, rose, yawned and stretched.

"It's true," she said, scratching his head. "I'm really bad at being a terrorist." The cat settled back down and gazed at her with blasé, feline indifference. He stayed that way until Tara began to furiously assault him with affection.

**------------------------------------------------**

After a tasty morning repast with Dr. McAllister, Tara went to her room to change clothes and pet the kitties some more. Today's morning activity was live steel with Ace. The quiet, creepy girl had been at breakfast, contentedly reading, further reinforcing the fact that she hadn't been attacked by government thugs the night before.

Tara stretched, cuddled Caoilte some more, and, knife in hand, made her way to the scheduled rendezvous. Surprisingly, Ace wasn't there when she arrived. Usually the younger girl was exceedingly punctual, so her absence was both strange and noteworthy. Tara shrugged and began to stretch, loosening up her muscles for the forthcoming exertion.

Not even a minute later, Ace appeared in the doorway. She wore neat, new, black shorts and a black T-shirt in contrast to Tara's outfit, sea-green shorts and light blue top, slashed and mottled with old blood stains. Tara thought it strange that this was the first time she'd seen Ace in a T-shirt for sparring or knife fighting, but the color suited her.

"I apologize for my lateness," she said, tying her hair back, despite its short length.

"That's fine," Tara said, holding a stretch. "It's not like I was gonna start without you." Ace ignored the jest and started her own stretching. A few minutes later, Tara was ready, but Ace wasn't.

As she waited, she tried to make some small talk. "How's the leg?"

"Fine."

"Were you up late last night?"

"I am up late every night. I find that I cannot sleep because I am so…" she let her voice trail off as she pondered the word she wanted to use. It came a few seconds later, "restless."

"Oh, yeah, I know _exactly_ what you mean." Tara had quickly found that if she didn't work to tire herself out during the day she would have a hard time sleeping. That was somewhat disappointing, considering how much she enjoyed sleeping. But she enjoyed running too, and jogging a few miles before bed helped.

Ace straightened up, picked up her knife and walked to the center of the mat to take a place opposite her. "All ready?" Tara asked. Ace nodded and bowed to her before sliding into a fighting stance. Tara had learned that bowing was a peculiar affectation of Japanese culture. An old habit the younger girl couldn't kick.

Tara readied herself, gripping the knife in her right hand while raising her left to ward off incoming blows, or grab an opponent who got too close. That was just one of the many things that Joker had taught her about fighting: it only took one knife strike to the right spot to kill a man and grabbing your opponent and hauling him in could give you the opportunity you needed. Most men underestimated her and figured she was too weak to put up much of a fight in such close quarters. Ace was both shorter and slimmer than she, so it must come as even more of a surprise for some big goon to find out how strong the little girl was.

Ace inched forward. Tara was more reactive; she figured that in most fights her opponent would take the initiative, so she was content to wait and react. Ace was often glad to oblige.

Ace's blade shot forward, aimed at Tara's belly. Tara darted forward and left, to the outside of her opponent's reach and tried to grab her arm while aiming a stab at her torso. Ace followed through with the stab, spinning counterclockwise. Tara managed to grab her arm, but Ace's left elbow came around and slammed her in the cheek. The impact gave Ace the leverage she needed to escape Tara's grasp. They spun away from each other.

The tip of Tara's knife was stained red. Trying to slash Ace as she had come by had only resulted in a scratch across her ribs, light enough to draw blood but not deep enough to be noticed.

Ace looked down at the scratch, then at Tara. "Too shallow for my taste," she said.

_Creepy girl, _Tara thought to herself.

Tara wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, and she was painfully aware of it. It was never much of an issue with the boys, and Dr. McAllister always did her best to explain anything Tara might not otherwise understand, but Ace had this knowing smirk, like she understood some clever joke that Tara had missed, and she was doing it right now.

Tara frowned but let the matter drop. Ace inched forward again, smirking all the while. She waited, then took another step forward. She feinted to the left, trying to provoke a reaction, but Tara remained placid. She'd gotten good at telling the difference between a feint and a real strike.

Ace stepped forward again. They were now just a little over a meter apart. Being so close made Tara uneasy and she struck. Her left hand went to Ace's right, trying to grab her wrist while her knife went high, aiming for the other's girl's collarbone. Ace moved almost at the same time. For a split second, they grappled, each girl's knife caught in the other's grip. Ace brought her knee up, trying to knee her in the belly, while Tara twisted to the left. Overbalanced and pivoting on one leg, Ace started to fall. Tara fell on top of her, pinning Ace's knife and thigh beneath her own body. _Fat asses are good for something!_ Tara was able to tear her own wrist free and brought the blade up under Ace's guard, aimed at her stomach even as Ace grabbed her head.

When she felt the blade against her, Ace ceased struggling and said, "Yield." They disentangled themselves and stood. Gaining her feet, Ace added, "Nicely done."

"Well, y'know, it could've gone either way."

"Really?" she said, running her eyes over Tara. "I would not have thought you were _that_ type." _There was that smirk again!_

"I didn't-" Tara said with a frown. "You know what I mean!"

"Of course," she said, but her eyes told a different story. _Whatever_. It was the sort of game Ace liked to play. She liked to unnerve her opponents. Whether she actually did that in the field was doubtful; there wasn't much talking involved when they were out and about killing government goons, so why she felt the need to do it here was anyone's guess. Tara had her theories, of course, but it wasn't terribly important either way.

Ace brought her guard up but shifted her stance subtly. She stepped forward again. Tara waited. Ace took another step forward, feinted left then stabbed at Tara's chest with her right. Not fooled by the feint, Tara seized Ace's wrist with her own left and brought her knife straight in at Ace's ribs again, right above her stomach. She checked the blow to avoid actually stabbing the girl, though. But Ace had stepped in close and whirled. Tara wasn't willing to let go of her wrist, so Ace used that leverage to throw her in a standard shoulder throw.

Landing flat on her back, she tried to roll away to get up, but Ace was too quick. She had dropped a foot on Tara's forearm to pin it and brought the knife to her throat even as she grabbed for Tara's weapon.

"Yield," Tara called. It was pretty obvious she had screwed that one up. This was usually how it went between the two of them. With Joker she could spar for a half hour or so without ever landing a blow, but he usually managed to grab and pin her. King was a much better fighter than she and it showed more often than not. With Ace there was usually a quick exchange and one of them would lose. Tara liked to think it was fifty-fifty, but maybe she was flattering herself.

Ace let her up and she readied herself again, but paused, noting the blood soaking into the other girl's shirt. Tara must've scored her before she was thrown. "You wanna bandage that?"

Ace looked down, as if noticing it for the first time. "No," she replied, "it is nothing."

"You sure?"

"What are bodies for if not to be abused?" Tara gave her a strange look. Mistaking the other girl's apprehension, she added, "Did I say it right?"

"What? Oh, yeah, it's just…" _Just that you're weird_, she finished, mentally. Ace was the newest of their crew and the youngest and sometimes it was hard to reconcile the sad girl who had been wheeled to their facility with the strange, young woman she was now.

**------------------------------------------------**

Back when King was learning to walk again and Joker was still recovering from surgery, Tara and Dr. McAllister would meet for tea and biscuits every day. Dr. McAllister wasn't British, but she liked tea and Tara liked biscuits so they got along well. They also both preferred English to Italian, and spoke it when it was not impolite to do so.

Dr. McAllister was reading through a folder full of all sorts of charts and pictures and Tara had asked about it, being the curious sort. The young doctor showed her a picture of a somber-looking, Asian girl and explained that she was to be the fourth and final member of their team.

"Ooh. It'll be nice to have another girl around. What's her name?"

Dr. McAllister smiled and said, "Her callsign will be 'Ace.'"

"Oh," Tara had said, expecting a different answer. When no further explanation was forthcoming, she said, "She looks so young. How old is she?"

"She'll be eighteen in October."

"Oh. Is she Chinese?"

"She's Japanese, dear." Her tone implied that it was a dumb mistake, but Tara knew next to nothing about Japan. Nothing besides what she'd seen in cartoons and the rare comic book, that is.

"Do you think she speaks any English?"

"I expect so," Dr. McAllister replied, scribbling notes on some papers from the folder. "English is taught in schools there. Her Italian is probably poor, though."

"So why are we importing Japanese girls again?" Tara asked.

"For Dr. Nori," the other woman replied, a hint of humor in her voice.

"Oh?"

"That girl has this peculiar _blah, blah, blah_…" She hadn't actually said '_blah, blah, blah_,' but Tara had tuned out the medical terminology because it was all stuff she didn't understand. Dr. McAllister noticed and simplified her explanation accordingly, "That means that her muscles have been getting weaker and will continue to do so. She's been practically bedridden for the past month."

"And she's only eighteen? That's horrible!"

Dr. McAllister made a noise of assent. "Dr. Nori wasn't sure she'd last much longer. Her condition has been deteriorating quite rapidly over the last week or so, and he feared cardiopulmonary complications."

"Cardio…?" Tara asked, unfamiliar with the word.

"The heart is a muscle and, for her, it's atrophying like all her other muscles."

"Her heart is wasting away?"

**------------------------------------------------**

Her reminiscence was interrupted by Ace stepping in to slash at her thigh. Tara stepped back a bit and tried a retaliatory stab, but Ace had already retreated beyond her reach and her blade cut nothing but air. Tara understood, then. Ace had shifted her weight from her heels to her toes to step in, attack and step away quickly. The next time she did, Tara pursued as she backed up and barely avoided running into the other girl's knife. This dance of attack-retreat-pursue continued for another few minutes, until they both paused, breathing heavily.

Tara took this time to pose the question, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"A brother. No sisters."

"That must be nice. I'm an only child."

Ace's only reply was a sly smile.

"Don't you think it would be neat to have a little sister?"

"I imagine it would be the same as having a brother," was the reply. It was delivered in such a noncommittal tone that it was hard to tell what she thought of the idea.

Further speculation was put on hold as Ace moved to the attack again. They dodged, slashed and whirled for a few more minutes. Taking advantage of the other girl being off-balance, Tara aimed a cut at her face. Ace parried the blow and stepped close to grab her – and stepped right into the heel of her opponent's hand. The blow knocked her backwards and she slashed wildly as she fell back.

"Oh, sorry about that." Tara always felt bad about hitting someone when sparring. _Well, not always_, she thought to herself.

Ace shook her head and made a noise of disagreement. "It was a good counter." She pointed at Tara, who looked down to discover blood running down her arm from the slash she'd gotten. Once she was made aware of it, the cut started to hurt more.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, holding her arm with the wound upwards, trying not to bleed on the mat. "Would you mind…?"

Both girls walked to the nearby first aid station where Ace grabbed a roll of gauze. Tara held out her arm and Ace started to wrap it tightly, the white material turning a dark red as it soaked in the excess blood.

As she stood there, arm outstretched, Tara asked, "Hey, do you have plans tonight? I found this nice, little boutique downtown and I was going to check it out. I'm sure they'd have plenty of stuff in your size." _Probably an overabundance, considering how small and slim you are_, she thought.

She seemed to have caught the other girl off guard, though. "_Eto_… I was going to watch some DVDs I bought. Sorry."

"Oooh. Anything good?" She hoped it was anime. Tara loved drawings and cartoons and had since she was a little girl. It was part of what had inspired her to try her own hand at illustration. Japanese cartoons, collectively, anime, had this peculiar ability to blend realism and tragedy with unabashed cuteness. And the boys in anime were always gorgeous and stylish in a way real boys so often were not.

"The audio is in Japanese," she said curtly.

"Oh." That meant subtitles. Tara didn't like subtitles. It was disconcerting to have to read the lines in something, and even worse to have to match the written dialogue with the spoken lines. She always had trouble keeping up, even though lots of anime was available with English subtitles.

Wrapped and bandaged, Tara flexed her fingers as Ace returned the gauze to the first aid kit. The pain was like a dull throbbing which spiked when she clenched her fingers into a fist or twisted her arm. But it was bearable.

"Are you okay to continue?" the other girl asked.

"Yeah, I'll be fine." Out in the field she wouldn't have the luxury of calling off a fight because she got nicked.

The next hour was brutal. Tara skipped the small talk in favor of clenching her teeth and fighting on. Ace seemed to be spending more time attacking Tara's left – her wounded arm – but that was to be expected. The only one who wouldn't have tried to exploit her condition was Joker, and that's because he was a big softie.

Ace pressed the attack at every opportunity and Tara lost ground, favoring her left arm. She got a cut on her thigh and an elbow to the belly for her troubles, but her arm continued to bleed anew with the shock of every blow.

Ace continued to assail her verbally, as well, but by now Tara had gotten so used to it that the pain in her arm commanded much more of her attention.

Tara tried switching her knife to her right, but that didn't help. Punching and grabbing had all the same problems. Eventually she gave up trying to avoid it and just did her best to ignore the pain. It worked to a certain degree. By the time they were ready to call it quits, Tara had two more light cuts and Ace had another four. The bandage around her arm had soaked through to the point that she unwound it and had Ace wrap her arm again.

"Y'know, the boys never seem to get this messy when they fight," she said thoughtfully.

"They are better at it, more practiced."

"You say that as if it's a good thing."

"In this line of work it is."

"I bet we look better doing it, though," she said, managing a weak smile despite the pain in her arm. "In that respect, the guys can't match us, their sisters-in-arms."

Ace had walked out the door with Tara right behind. In the hallway, Tara asked, "Hey, I'm gonna get this looked at to see if Dr. McAllister thinks it should get stitched up or something. After that, d'you wanna–"

"Queen," she said, softly, interrupting the other girl. Ace had half turned, and Tara could see her in profile. "Please do not misunderstand, but," whether she had paused for effect or was looking for the right words, Tara could only guess. "We are colleagues, co-workers, nothing more. Not family–" Though her voice remained soft and level throughout, there was an undercurrent of menace to her last few words.

"Oh, how could I misunderstand?" Tara replied sharply.

**------------------------------------------------**

When the call had come over the radio on their last op, Tara and Joker had hurriedly run for the nearest stairs after finishing their business with Section One. Halfway down they'd heard the grenade go off. They had split to come at the room where King had been from two different directions. Despite repeated attempts to contact them, there had been no response from Ace or King; the radio had remained deathly silent.

Tara had figured that they had been killed, that this little charade had turned deadly and that two of the people who were her only friends in this – the only ones who really understood what she was going though – were gone.

She had torn into the PRF thugs with a cold – almost suicidal – fury that even she had found scary. Once she had learned that King and Ace were both alive, if somewhat battered, her knees had turned watery and she had threatened to tear up. The sudden realization that these were people she fought and bled with and that they were friends in a way she'd never had before was stunning and she was still trying to figure out the implications.

Sure, she'd had plenty of other friends. Her good friends in school, Aria and Francesca who'd later gone to university to study Chemistry and Literature, respectively. The dark, quiet girl, Cass, with whom she used to sing and talk about boys. Even her good friend Rafael, the only guy from whom she had no secrets. But none of those friends would fight and kill for her the way the people here did.

**------------------------------------------------**

_For he who today sheds his blood with me shall be my brother_. _And sister_, she thought to herself.

How could she tell that to them, though? King didn't care; consumed by vengeance as he was. And Ace? Who the Hell knew what she thought or wanted?

"Sorry," Ace said, quietly. At least she had the decency to look contrite.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but Queen cut her off, "No, it's my fault. I'm the one who should apologize." _For being stupid enough to think you gave a damn_, she finished for herself. With that, Queen turned and walked down the hall, the pain in her arm nothing compared to the ache in her heart.

**Next:** _Lost Innocence_


	12. Enemy at the Gates

**Author's Note**:Spoken dialogue in this story is always presumed to be Italian but written in English. Where there are exceptions, they're noted as such. When a character hears something in an unfamiliar language, it's written verbatim and italicized. When a character hears or says something that is not in Italian, but that she understands, the words are translated to English. In this chapter, Joker and Atiya bring up some terms which refer to specific socio-political events in Italy (compare: Great Depression, New Deal and War on Drugs). Because they are proper names, they're rendered in Italian and italicized, but this is probably the only time you'll see something like this happen.

**Shameless Plug**:Atiya mentions _Lacuna Coil_ in the first scene. They're a kickin', goth-metal band who just happen to be from northern Italy. If you like that sort of music at all, check them out.

**Misspent Youth**

Joker walked past the throng of customers milling about and out a side door onto a patio where sat several small tables, each ringed by chairs and customers. He strode to one near the edge, smiling at its lone occupant as she looked up at him.

"Nice to see you, little brother," she said in sultry tones as he came to stand by the small table.

"You, too," he said, taking a seat. "You look good."

"Don't I always?"

"Invariably. Those maternity clothes really made you look stunning last year," he said.

"Shush!" she replied with mock severity. Joker sat back and smiled as his sister took a drink of wine. Though she lamented the loss of her girlish figure, her children were so much more important to her.

Atiya was barely more than a year his senior, but according to her, that year made all the difference in the world. She had grown to be a gorgeous woman, much like her mother, with eyes like pools of obsidian and hair like darkest night, even if it was barely shoulder-length now. For all that, though, she had a warm smile and a cheerful disposition. She was wearing a tan dress and matching blouse with a plunging neckline designed to be provocative. Joker would've appreciated that sort of thing on (or off of, as the case may be) many women. Just not on his sister.

"What's the occasion?" he asked.

"Haven't seen you in a while. You're always all busy with work and never have time for the important things in life anymore."

They were interrupted by a waitress, a cute, young, blonde thing, who hurried off to fetch a drink for the new arrival.

"Important things in life?" Joker asked.

"Like seeing me, of course," she said with a charming smile. "Maybe all this time spent in the military is dulling your wits. Both of them."

"Oh, this important bit of my life? Like spending time with my favorite sister?"

"I'm your only sister."

"Yeah, you won by default." She smiled with all the kindness of a viper. This was often the way it was between them. When they had been young, Joker and Atiya had been very close to each other, but they had also been the two siblings most likely to be fighting about one thing or another. These days they didn't fight much, but they did love to exchange barbs here and there.

The waitress returned with his drink and told them she'd be back in a few minutes to take their order.

"Oh," Atiya said, sitting forward suddenly, "before I forget, have you called your mother recently?"

"Uh, well…" Joker struggled a bit, caught off guard. His mother was the one woman he genuinely felt guilty about not calling. He also had_ not_ talked to her in a while.

"That's what I thought. You should call her. She misses you."

"Well, you know, I've been busy, and…"

"Busy? I can see," she said, leaning back in her chair. Joker couldn't hope to fool her by lying, so he shrugged. "Call her."

He sighed. "What is it about motherhood that makes women so crazy?" he asked, offhandedly.

"The crazy comes from dealing with men who act like children. Call your mother."

"Yes, dear," he said, defeated. After a minute of silence between them, he asked, "Speaking of children, how're yours?"

She smiled as she thought about her family. "Wonderful, as always. I think 'Carlo wants Victor to play every sport imaginable– "

"He's still playing football, right?"

"Of course! But he's tried half a dozen others. Every time I turn around we're buying more athletic equipment."

"Wait until I see him. I'll tell him that pads and helmets are for pussies!"

"Don't you dare! He'll believe it, coming from you!" She smiled and took a drink while her brother laughed. Once the mirth abated, she continued, "And if Victor wants to play without pads, you can bet 'Rita will as well, because she's _always_ better than her younger brother. Just like her mother."

"Must run in the family or something," Joker agreed, wryly. "What other wonderful traits have you blessed her with?"

"Among her other fine sensibilities are her taste in music– " she broke off what she was saying as sudden excitement gripped her. She swatted at his arm as if to get his attention and, said, "Ooh! Guess who's going to be in town on the 31st!"

Joker shrugged. He had no idea.

"_Lacuna Coil_! And _I'm_ going to get tickets to see them!" she said, clapping her hands together in girlish glee.

It didn't much surprise. His sister had a great love of various styles of music. When she'd been younger and studying at university, their parents were sure – based on the string of musician/loser boyfriends she'd had – that she would end up pregnant and divorced before she was 21. Thankfully, her standards for men eventually changed and she stopped considering a guy's talent with a five-string to be his defining feature. But she still had a varied and interesting collection of music.

He was familiar with the group she meant. After all, they were a local success story with fans all over Europe and in the States, as well. Joker could listen to them, but he wasn't a big fan. Atiya was right, though: they _were_ talented.

"Who're you going with," he asked.

""Rita. She heard _Comalies_ one day when I was listening to it and said, 'Mama, who's that girl with the pretty voice?' and I said, 'That's Cristina Scabbia and she's in the best band in the whole world.'"

Joker rolled his eyes. "How will all your other favorite bands take that?"

"Oh, shush!" she scolded. "I only have one favorite band."

"Per day?"

She gave him a dirty look, but it softened quickly. "Every _few_ days," she said with a smile.

"How's my brother-in-law? You've been keeping him in line, I trust?"

"'Carlo is fine. His firm's been getting a lot of work recently. You've been watching the news?"

"A.C. Milan is going all the way this year, woo hoo?" he asked, fully expecting her question to be non-sports related.

"Well, here's to hoping," she said casually. Atiya didn't love football the way Joker did, (_no one_ in his family loved football the way he did) but she did enjoy watching it and was familiar with the local teams. "But I had meant that there've been some scandals in Parliament recently and 'Carlo's firm was hired to independently audit governmental records."

"Yeah, stupid government spending money on stuff. And here I thought they just spent money on themselves, poor things."

She smiled dryly and said, "Yes, don't you want to adopt a poor senator or deputy? Just twenty euros a day can guarantee that your special deputy can grow fat and lounge in his Jacuzzi while getting sucked off by whores as he plans new ways to siphon off taxes for his own use." She sat back and frowned, distaste overcoming sarcasm. "I don't even know why I talk about politics anymore, it just makes me upset."

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Then the politicians."

"Being in politics is enough of a problem itself, these days. Three deputies are facing corruption charges and there was a senator recently assassinated. Money and power comes at a price, it would seem. Did you see senator Picchi on TV the other day?"

"No, should I have?"

She shrugged, then continued, "He was at a press conference telling about how the socialists were dedicated to combating unemployment and inflation, especially in the south."

"Not a lot of support for something like that here."

"He was speaking from Rome. The point is that if he's such a socialist, why does his car cost as much as my house?"

"That must be some car!" Joker's sister had married a financial analyst whose lucrative hobbies ensured a comfortable living for their family while allowing Atiya to devote herself to raising their children. "Besides, someone had to manufacture that car for him. See, he's introducing money into the economy to reduce unemployment and combat inflation!" Joker said gleefully.

Ever since her first year at university, his sister loved to ramble about politics and economics. Since he usually didn't much care one way or another for what she was arguing about, he was content to either bounce ideas off her if he was feeling argumentative or grumble about things if he was feeling agreeable. Today was a bit of both.

Joker merely shrugged. "The guy's gotta look the part." Atiya arched an eyebrow inquisitively but said nothing. "Well, I mean, if he's supposed to act like a leader or representative of the people, no one's going to take him too seriously if he shows up to a session of Parliament with a beat-up Volkswagen and a grungy suit."

"Everyone should own a beat-up Volkswagen," Atiya said with a grin. Despite her husband's fondness for BMWs, Atiya had owned an old Volkswagen Golf for years and frequently commented that everyone should own one. "But more to the point," she continued, "this man's a public servant, or he's supposed to be. It's fine to look professional, but he doesn't need to be ostentatious."

"So it's okay for 'Carlo to drive a pricey Beemer, but not for Picchi to drive a…?" Joker asked, gesturing for her to finish his sentence.

She did. "Lamborghini. Gallardo coupe."

He whistled appreciatively. "Senators make that sort of bank?"

"This one does."

Further conversation was interrupted by the waitress bringing drinks and taking their order. When she had gone, Atiya took a sip of wine and said, "I think the car was a 'gift,' so he didn't exactly spend any money on it, but he could've done something better than driving it around town."

"Like what?"

"Donate it or auction it and give the proceeds to charity." Joker laughed at that. His sister frowned at him.

"I'll tell your husband he should donate his Beemer to charity and see what he says about that." As much as he loved his sister, sometimes she just didn't make sense. This was one of those times.

"That's a poor analogy and you know it. First, 'Carlo doesn't drive a Lamborghini nor does his car cost anywhere near that much. Second, he works in the private sector; he's not a senator. He's especially not a senator with a socialist platform. Mr. Picchi is blatantly hypocritical, but he knows how to get the votes and he knows how to play the politics."

"Politicians are just that, politicians. Isn't that what _Mani Pulite_ taught us?"

"Alas, that _is_ the way it is, but not the way it should be." She sighed as she contemplated her glass. "Whatever happened to the government having the interests of the people at heart?" she asked before downing the last of her wine.

"A pipe dream at best. What government has ever truly had the interests of the people at heart?"

They paused for a bit when the waitress came by to refill their drinks.

Sitting forward in her chair and leaning over conspiratorially, Atiya said, "Governments formed by revolution."

Lost, Joker asked, "Huh?"

"You asked, 'what government has the interests of the people at heart?' And my answer is, 'government formed by revolution.' A government of the people works better than a government of one person. Supposedly that's the entire reason we have a republic instead of a monarch."

Joker pondered that as he savored his wine. Instinctively, he took a glance around the little patio. Most people were involved in their own conversations. The noise of the city lingered in the background and his sister waited calmly and patiently for his response.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd throw in with the PRF," he said at last.

"Oh, come on, Rauf. Four out of every five people in Lombardy would throw in with the PRF if they haven't already. The media does their best to downplay the situation to portray Padania as some renegade, terrorist organization to discredit it, but that oversimplifies the situation while vilifying the people involved. The PRF is as much a political movement as anything else and that's what _really_ scares those fat fucks in Rome," she said with a frown.

"So what is it that Padania hopes to achieve, then? Overthrow the government and secede?"

She shook her head. "Legitimacy. Just like Sinn Féin did in Ireland, the PRF will work to become legitimately accepted and once it has done so it will become more moderate. It's been forced to resort to these tactics because the political mainstream is doing its best to ignore the pleas of us Northerners, while we're bled dry by rising taxes. If the Socialists _do_ get any more power in parliament we might as well just stop pretending to be a republic and stitch a hammer and sickle on the national flag."

"As much as the government skims off the top, there's plenty of good done with your tax money. Social programs exist to help the poor. _We_ were poor immigrants at one time," he reminded her.

"But Mama and Papa never relied on handouts, they were far too proud. The few times we did it was out of necessity. Rauf," she said, plaintively, "the best way to help poor people is to give them the tools to get themselves out of poverty. You know the saying, 'Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.' But there are too many deputies whose jobs depend on securing votes with government handouts. Handouts paid for by our taxes."

They were silent for a moment as he thought. Neither history nor politics were strong points for him, but he had a good head for facts. Putting them together was the hard part.

"But, the Savoys were deposed after the war. We've had a republic ever since and still we had _Tangentopoli_ and Senator Picchi. What's the answer, then? A full, Athenian democracy?"

She sighed in response. "There is no easy answer. Continued vigilance and holding our elected officials accountable are really the only answers. It's hard to do, but it needs to be done. Those in power have gotten used to being in power and doing whatever they can to stay in power, unbound by laws or morals. Didn't you ever wonder why there are no highly visible police officers who are at least sympathetic to the same ideals as Padania? That's because if you're tough on crime but not toeing the party line, you get targeted for removal."

"Criminals target the police, sis. It's the way things work," he said with a chuckle.

"Police chief Giustino Crenna was shot in the head with a high-powered rifle, but the assassin didn't so much as fire a shot at any of the cops around him! His successor stressed how we needed stronger ties to Rome and then denounced the PRF with the next breath." Realizing that she had been talking more loudly than before, she paused to look around. No one seemed to pay them any attention though.

When she spoke next, she was noticeably quieter, "And that guy's been doing just fine for the last few years. What we need is for people not to be afraid to espouse unpopular ideas."

Joker said nothing. Her words hit closer to home than she knew. In the _Carabinieri_ there had been an unspoken rule that no matter what the feelings of an individual, no one was openly sympathetic to the PRF.

She sat back in her chair and sighed. "Either that or just ditch Rome altogether," she grumbled.

"You favor secession?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I'm not sure it's really a good idea. I'm not as involved in the cultural end of things because I still think of myself as being from Italy instead of Lombardy, but there are some good arguments for it. I'd be content with a greater degree of regional autonomy and I bet plenty of others would as well. That and lower taxes, of course."

They sat in silence for a minute before she picked up her glass and took another drink. She had made a lot of good points. Their parents really were the sort to frown on handouts even though their mother had started donating money, both to charities and the Church, once her children had grown up and moved out.

Furthermore, their father was the sort of person who abhorred laziness and favored hard work as a way to better oneself and one's situation, a set of values he'd instilled in his children. Honest labor, in particular; Father had a rather poor opinion of politicians and lawyers. The end result was that Joker was quite sympathetic to what his sister had to say.

"You know I used to take my orders from Rome," he said carefully, not wanting to alarm her, but curious what she would have to say.

She shrugged. "There are many who get orders from Rome but choose to listen to their hearts instead. That and you would never choose duty over family, no matter what you'd like to think," she finished, a knowing smile on her lips.

He smiled but looked away, movement out of the corner of his eye catching his attention. The waitress was on her way to their table, carrying trays of hot food. The air filled with the tasty smells of dinner as she offloaded her burdens. Joker asked, "So, since you asked me out, dinner's on you tonight?"

Atiya thanked the waitress and shrugged again at her brother's comment. "If you like."

"That's alright. I'll buy. It's the least I could do, right?"

She smiled at him. "How about we just split the check?"

**------------------------------------------------**

As he ambled into the conference room for the briefing, Joker whistled a happy tune. It was good to have seen Atiya the prior night, and it reinforced his commitment to his job. Both she and her husband had a much broader perspective than he on things like politics and the good of the country. It was a perspective he trusted.

King and Ace were sitting in uncomfortable silence when he arrived. He noticed it immediately, some sort of odd tension between them, but didn't let it get him down. He opened a window and sat down, whistling all the while. Ace politely ignored him as he whistled at her, and, his tune finished, he sat back and waited.

King was dressed in a shirt, jeans and combat boots. Ace was wearing a demure dress. Garbed thus and with her hair loose, she looked practically ladylike. They offered salutations after he was seated and done whistling. Joker was left with the distinct feeling he had interrupted something between them, but it was kind of a moot point. There was a time and a place for everything, and now was the time and place for serious business.

_Unless Tara showed up in pajamas again_. The thought brought a smile to his face.

As it happened, Tara was wearing a patterned, blue sundress when she showed up. Joker returned her smile and added, "You're looking fashionable, might I add."

She smiled and thanked him, then acknowledged King's greeting and then Ace's. Her attitude towards the younger girl was discernibly cooler. There was something between the two. Joker filed that away for future reference; he would ask Tara about it later.

"Vinny's not here yet?" she asked. A brilliant deduction on her part.

"It would appear not." Joker responded. Which was surprising to note, as Garibaldi was generally punctual.

"Any ideas what's on our agenda this time?" she asked.

"It better not be a firefight in the middle of an abandoned building," Joker said with a frown. His colleagues offered no response, lost as they were in their own thoughts.

As they sat in silence, the approaching footsteps of a small, fat man could be heard as Garibaldi made his way down the hallway at his regular, hurried pace. The man himself walked into the room and sat down, setting his briefcase on the table with a heavy thump. He grunted acknowledgement at them.

"Alright, my superiors and I were very impressed with the way you handled yourselves on the last op. You all did a wonderful job in handling a difficult situation and adapting to changing conditions in the field, all while flawlessly completing mission objectives. Excellent work."

Joker had nothing to say that was worth saying. Super-ass-kicking-bio-ninja-soldiers of doom though they may be, their experience last time out had served as a poignant reminder of their own mortality. For all their superior tactics, high-tech armor and amazing regenerative capabilities, it would take nothing more than a single stray bullet and Joker would end up as a pallbearer again. Or worse yet, in a casket himself.

The stony silence that greeted Garibaldi after he had finished speaking meant that the others were occupied with similar thoughts. After a few seconds, Vinny cleared his throat and continued on, doing his best to ignore the mood in the room.

"Your next action will be easily more dangerous than the last, but we've taken steps to minimize your exposure and done what we could to ensure your safety. Even so, logistics is only the first of your problems. You'll be infiltrating a compound on the outskirts of Rome, so there's going to be a good deal of transit time and even some jogging."

"Rome? Is this a follow-up to our action against Section One?" King asked. Rome was the heart of enemy territory, both militarily and politically. Not only would it be difficult to get in and out, but they could be seriously outnumbered and outgunned in short order unless they kept a very low profile there. It was better than getting caught in the crossfire between Section One and the PRF, but not by much.

"Very much so, but don't expect to see more of them anytime soon. You did a lot worse to them than they did to you," he said with a smirk. "No, this will be a hit and run action against their _sister_ organization, Section Two." Almost subconsciously, Joker sat forward, his attention engaged. He'd heard of Section One from his time as an MP, but mostly rumors and secondhand stories. But he'd never heard of a Section Two, or any others.

"How many of these Sections are there?" Tara asked.

"That's really kinda hard to say," Vinny said, scratching his head. He pulled a cigar and ashtray from his briefcase and lit the stogie. "Bear in mind that these organizations don't legally exist anywhere and it's hard to track down information on them, but our best guess is that there's three sections attached to the same umbrella organization.

"You've already met the Section One guys, who specialize in para-military, counter-terrorism ops. Section Two gets the low profile, covert stuff. Section Three – if it really exists – is devoted to intelligence, counter-intelligence and espionage. While we can identify the major players from the first two, it looks like Section Three is better at playing spy games than we are."

Tara muttered an, "Oh," but was otherwise silent.

"Is this more wetwork, then?" King asked.

"Well, not quite. Your secondary objective is going to be a rampage where you try to put the most bullets in the greatest amount of people in the shortest amount of time."

Tara scowled and opened her mouth to speak, but Joker got there first, "Shooting but no killing?"

"If you can avoid it, I'd prefer you _not_ kill anyone."

King nodded sagely while Joker and Tara exchanged confused looks. It was Ace who provided the explanation. "Bodybags are cheaper than hospital beds."

Of course, he should have realized that sooner. More resources were spent to help a soldier recover from his injuries than were spent on a funeral. It made a twisted kind of sense, especially if you looked at it as a numbers game. Joker never really had, though.

Tara didn't seem to know what to say to that, but King was already thinking ahead, as usual. "What's the primary objective then?"

"That will require the expertise of the Little Miss over there," he said, gesturing to Ace with his cigar. "But first," he said, jamming the cigar in his mouth and pulling some photos from his briefcase, "have a look at the competition." With that, he tossed the collection of photos into the middle of the table where they spread out to reveal a dozen or so glossy pictures, half of which were those of young girls at the cusp of adolescence.

Stunned silence followed.

When Vinny spoke, his voice was devoid of his characteristic humor and was solemn, almost ominous in tone. "While you four are relatively recent arrivals to this scene, the Italian government has been working on cybernetic technology for at least the last ten years. Full mechanical replacement is still not commonplace in any way, but certain unscrupulous factions have found that it is possible to replace up to two thirds or so of a body's original equipment with artificial components. There are several problems with this, least of which is the high mortality rate among older subjects. The government's answer recently has been to utilize cybernetic operatives for assassination and intimidation against organized crime, rival political groups and Padania. The pilot program was so successful it soon rounded up a whole bunch of backing from a lot of influential members of parliament. The results are what you see in these pictures."

"My God, they're just little girls," Tara said, horrified. Her words were in English, but the sentiment was plain.

Joker and King exchanged a significant glance. _Looks like the rumors were true_, he thought to himself. And if he had been hearing about these things when he was an MP, they must've been around for a while by now.

"They're not little girls," Garibaldi said. "Thinking like that will get you killed the first time you run into one. They're cyborgs. Machines. You could empty an MP5 into the chest of one of these and it'd still come after you with blood on its hands and murder in its eyes. Don't be fooled by what they look like. They were all little girls once, but not anymore." There was a zealousness, a depth of emotion to his words that spoke of some personal vendetta he had, but now was certainly not the time to ask about it. Instead, Joker turned his attention to the photos.

Ace had reached out and picked up a photo to study it more closely. It was a picture of a girl with short, blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a neutral sort of look to her, neither smiling nor frowning. For all Joker knew, this could be a random picture of some girl who was just told that she couldn't play with her friends until she washed the dishes. Or it could be the portrait of a killer.

Joker reached towards the pile, aiming for a picture of a lanky blonde whose hair was done up in pigtails, but King got there first. "I didn't think you were much for blondes," the big man quipped. King ignored him as he studied the picture he held.

Unfazed, Joker grabbed another picture out of the pile. This one was of a pretty girl with dark hair and a shy smile. She seemed to be posed for the shot with a small dog, maybe some sort of terrier, in her embrace.

"These two work as a team?" he asked Garibaldi, flipping the picture so Vinny could look at the girl and her pooch. To his surprise, there were words on the back, written in Sharpie. The name of a girl, presumably the one pictured, hung alone. Below it were the words, '_Agent: Marco Togni_.'

"They all work as teams, one girl cyborg with one agent. The dolls are little more than tools with limited decision-making ability. They mostly do what their agents tell them to do. They're loyal to a fault and utterly self-sacrificing. When given the chance, target the agent instead of the cyborg. The agents are the brains of these teams, but they're not bulletproof the way the cyborgs are."

"Actually, I'd meant the dog," Joker said, tapping the picture to emphasize the words.

"I hadn't," was the reply.

Joker smiled outwardly, but was quietly miffed. He started to dig through the pile of pictures and a few seconds later had located the picture of Marco Togni. Judging by the picture, Togni was a good-looking guy in his twenties or thirties with glasses, stubble and short, black hair.

The others had noted his actions and started looking on the backs of their own photos. Tara's puzzled expression could only mean she didn't understand something, so when Joker noticed it he asked, "What?"

She looked up at him and said, "There's no name on this one. Like, there was a name, but it's been blacked out." The picture she held was of another dark-haired girl. This one had long hair, light skin and glasses. _Why would a cyborg need glasses? On that thought, why would a cyborg have a dog? _Joker wondered to himself. When Tara turned the picture over, the back listed her name as _Claes_, but the spot below it was a black rectangle. If there had been a name there, it was unreadable now.

All eyes went to Garibaldi. "Part of what keeps these things under control is a psychological dependency that's pharmacologically induced. It creates this profound attachment, a dependence of a cyborg on its agent. That one's agent died and hasn't been replaced. When originally conceived, one of the sticking points of the project was that the loss of an agent rendered a cyborg useless because it couldn't be reprogrammed to accept another agent. The mad scientists who think this shit up have come up with a workaround, but _that_ cyborg is too old to benefit from it. You won't see it in the field," he said, gesturing to the picture of Claes, "since it's a guinea pig devoted to testing the limits of the design, but it'll almost certainly be in Rome when you get there."

_Claes_. The name meant something to him, but he wasn't sure what. He'd read or seen it somewhere before, but he couldn't place where. Just another thing to think about later.

Ace said, "Is 'Rico' a girl's name?" She held up the picture of the blonde girl, then turned it to display the back. The girl's name was indeed listed as _Rico_, with her agent as _Jean Croce_.

"Not usually," Joker replied.

Garibaldi said, "The cyborgs have no recollection of their origins. The agents rename them to further separate them from who they used to be. And, no, Rico is _not_ a girl's name."

"You just said we wouldn't see that one in the field but that we will see it in Rome. We're hitting them at their home base? Their barracks or maintenance facility or whatever they have?" King asked, tearing his eyes away from the picture he held with some difficulty.

"That's right."

"How many?" Ace asked softly, putting Rico back and grabbing another portrait.

"Huh?"

"How many of them are there?"

Joker looked at the mess on the table, trying to count the pictures. There were thirteen total. That meant six teams of girl and agent with Claes as the odd one out. More than they would ever want to encounter at any one time, but not really all that many.

"There's no good estimate on that. 'A lot,' how's that? We have detailed information on these, but there could be more. Another facility, maybe. There's a pretty good bet the Americans have their own. There's no reason they couldn't have sold the technology to Japan, Russia, or any EU nation. As for our good friends in Section Two? It's hard to say. Probably twice as many as you see here, but a lot of them are in the field now. They see deployment all over the peninsula as well as in places like Sicily, Sardinia, and God knows where else. They've become increasingly popular with the powers-that-be for anything from chasing down crime bosses to 'dabbling' in foreign policy."

By now Tara had set three pictures of girls side by side, but the look on her face was still one of disbelief. When she looked at those faces, all she saw were little girls. _Who knows_, Joker thought to himself, _maybe she sees herself in those faces_. Tara had been **the** prototype; the first of their kind, as it were. Joker knew that it was because of something that had happened in her past, necessitating some sort of modifications. While that was the story for all of them, King excluded, for Tara it had happened when she was young. Maybe even the same age as any of these girls.

To allay her doubts, he asked, "So what should we expect? What can they do?"

"And how do we fight them?" King asked.

"Well, they're rather unassuming, and you already know exactly what they look like so there shouldn't be any surprises when they pull guns and start shooting. That's an important point. There were a lot of problems when these things were first introduced because we got all these reports of killer kids. It sounded crazy, but seeing them in action will make a believer out of you.

"They're strong, a lot stronger than you'd expect from a bunch of 'little girls.' You guys are supposed to be stronger, but let's not get into any arm-wrestling contests if we don't have to, okay?"

"You said something about them being bulletproof?" King asked.

"They bleed just like you and I – or at least they appear to – but no one's ever disabled one of these things just by shooting it. There should be a limit to how much damage they can take before they stop working, but as I said, none of our guys has taken one out before. The weak points are supposed to be the eyes. The skulls are too thick to penetrate without something in a large caliber, but the eyes are soft and squishy.

"But you're not going to kill them, just shoot them up a whole bunch. Try to avoid headshots and aim for the chest and extremities. If you have to, don't feel bad about sending one of these machines to the scrapheap, but make that a last resort.

"If you _do_ get in to hand-to-hand, keep in mind the fact that you have the advantage in size and mass so you should be able to move them around and control the fight that way. But they're deadly in close combat so your best bet is to stay away from them. That's what I would do."

_But we're badass super-soldiers and you're a fat man with a bad comb-over. If I were you, I'd stay away from them, too_. The retort lingered on his lips, almost ready to be spoken, but something about Vinny's mood implied he had no interest in jokes. Even so, Joker was interested in what these little girls were made of. Certainly not sugar nor spice nor anything nice.

"Alright. So what's the real objective of this mission?" King asked.

Pulling a manila folder from his briefcase, Vinny said to Ace, "You're gonna get to be the star of this show, Missy."

**Next:** _Fleeting Contact_


End file.
